A webinar is scheduled for late May to share with the public steps in the process to develop a new benchmark blue crab assessment, intended to better understand population dynamics and determine the fishery’s stock status.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries is holding the online meeting 6-8 p.m. Thursday, May 28, via WebEx. Register online to join the webinar. There will be a listening station in the division’s office in Morehead City as well.

A 2018 benchmark stock assessment indicates the state’s blue crab stock is overfished, which means that the population size is too small, and overfishing is occurring, which means that the removal rate is too high.

There was a 2023 stock assessment update but division staff and external peer reviewers identified concerns with model specifications and results, so the assessment is not being used for management, officials said. “However, available data from Division sampling and monitoring programs indicate a continued decline of the Blue Crab stock. The Division has started the process of developing a new benchmark stock assessment.”

During the webinar, division scientists will review the stock assessment process, including recent and future changes, and methods, including how data were selected for use, and report on progress in analyzing both dependent and independent data for the fishery used in the assessment model.

Fishery-dependent data are collected directly from the commercial and recreational fisheries and may include fishing effort, such as the number of fishing trips that harvested blue crab, and biological information such as lengths and sex of the crab and amount of landings and discards.

Fishery-independent data are collected from at-sea surveys, where scientists from the division and from partner organizations gather data on fish stock abundance, biology and the ecosystem.

Officials said there will be an opportunity to provide feedback on the stock assessment progress and process.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation is set to break ground next month in Carteret County on what officials describe as a first-of-its-kind facility intended to help shellfish growers overcome market barriers.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, says the Shellfish Mariculture Hub in Straits, an unincorporated Down East community with deep commercial seafood heritage, will serve as a shared resource for shellfish growers, marking a significant milestone in sustainable shellfish aquaculture in the state and supporting the local community. The Shellfish Mariculture Hub promises to enhance the production capabilities of shellfish farmers while promoting collaboration and innovation, according to the Coastal Federation, which plans to hold a groundbreaking ceremony at 11 a.m. May 4.

Situated at the Straits Landing Boat Ramp, the facility will provide shared refrigeration, equipment and water access, all of which farmers need to grow a thriving local industry rooted in coastal heritage and vital to the state’s blue economy. 

“From costly water access to long hauls for refrigeration and distribution, oyster growers face logistical barriers at every step,” explained Coastal Federation Oyster Program Director Alyson Flynn. “This facility is the solution towards streamlining operations and strengthening the shellfish mariculture industry.” 

Construction of the 50-foot, square building is expected to begin this summer.

The Shellfish Mariculture Hub is part of a broader, coordinated effort to grow the state’s oyster industry into a $100 million sector by 2030 — creating jobs, strengthening the coastal economy, and advancing resilient working waterfronts. By addressing a critical industry gap, the hub will lower barriers to market entry for new growers while enabling existing growers to expand and scale their operations, supporting the next generation of shellfish farmers. 

“Not only is the hub a centralized support facility for growers, but it is also an innovative model for the future of shellfish mariculture—equipping growers to thrive and serving as a blueprint for industry growth and investment along our coast,” said Flynn. 

A PBS docuseries exploring how to feed a growing population while protecting oceans, marine ecosystems and coastal communities will be featured as the Coastal Studies Institute’s Science on the Sound Lecture Series installment for this month, and in celebration of Earth Week.

The third episode of the series, “Hope in the Water,” titled “Changing the Menu,” will be shown at the historic Pioneer Theater in Manteo the evening of Monday, April 20. There is no charge to attend but registration is required at https://bit.ly/HopeInTheWater.

“Hope in the Water,” produced by Andrew Zimmern and David E. Kelley, “blends science, food, and storytelling to spotlight innovative solutions in what’s often called the ‘blue food’ system—food sourced from oceans, rivers, and aquaculture. Rather than focusing solely on the problems surrounding fisheries, the series highlights practical, real-world solutions, from regenerative aquaculture to rethinking the species we eat,” organizers said.

The event starts with a prescreening reception at 5:30 p.m. in the Pioneer Theater courtyard, featuring local seafood available for purchase from Basnight’s Lone Cedar Café food truck, beverages, and educational displays from community partners.

The film screening will begin at 6:30 p.m., followed by a cookbook giveaway and discussion with the following panelists:

• Dr. Sara Mirabilio, fisheries extension specialist with N.C. Sea Grant.
• Chef Mac Buben, owner of Sea Chef Dockside Kitchen.
• Evan Ferguson, food blogger and media coordinator at Cape Hatteras Secondary School.
• Jake Griffin, a local commercial fisherman.

The panel will discuss local efforts to diversify seafood consumption and offer perspectives on the future of seafood in North Carolina and beyond.

“This event is an opportunity to connect our community with the people and ideas shaping the future of seafood,” CSI Executive Director Reide Corbett said in a statement. “By bringing together scientists, fishers, chefs, and educators, we hope to inspire more sustainable choices that support both coastal livelihoods and healthy marine ecosystems.”

The Coastal Studies Institute, located in Wanchese on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus, has partnered with Fed by Blue, North Carolina Sea Grant, and the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau to host the viewing. Science on the Sound is CSI’s monthly, in-person lecture series brings perspectives from all over the state and highlights coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina.

Share your experiences and learn more about the issues surrounding shellfish aquaculture in Stump Sound and Topsail Sound next week during an informational presentation and listening session.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation and North Carolina Sea Grant are hosting the session from 1 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 14, in the town council’s chambers at the Surf City Municipal Complex, 214 W. Florence Way, Hampstead.

“Your feedback will help shape a balanced, informed path forward,” according to a promotional flier for the event.

The session will cover conflicts and perceived and actual problems regarding shellfish leases, such as those associated with viewshed and property values, navigation and safety, congestion and density.

“We know coastal waters mean different things to different people, and we want to hear from you,” according to the flier.

Coastal Federation Advocate Kerri Allen and Sea Grant Extension Director Frank Lopez are to facilitate the session, which is to be a scripted presentation and listening session, not a public hearing.

In April 2025, Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, introduced legislation to require a statewide study on shellfish leasing and current lease moratoriums. That measure, House Bill 841, was cleared by the House but stalled in the Senate, where it passed a first vote but was then referred on May 7, 2025, to the rules committee, where it remains.

Organizers of the listening session noted that space is limited and registration is required.

Those unable to attend but who wish to share their input may submit comments to https://forms.gle/sCJ1uLGCgbhig6Zr8.

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This story is presented in celebration of Women’s History Month, the theme for which in 2026 is “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future.”

Heather Rose flashes a knowing smile toward her sister, Becky, across a table at Blackbeard’s Grill, their family’s seafood restaurant in Beaufort. “Honey, we’ve got some gooood memories together.”

“Epic memories,” Becky replies.

Those unforgettable moments were often squeezed into late nights between the grueling days when Heather clocked 12-hour kitchen shifts, and Becky, stepping away from the restaurant and neighboring Rose Seafood Market, worked dawn to dusk, moving dirt, hauling rocks and setting shrubs for her own landscaping company.

Their grind never stood a chance against the tide.

“When darks come and the businesses closed, we go get in the truck, go to the boat ramp,” Heather says.

Pushing off for the banks to fish until the sun touched the horizon, the women were overjoyed to be under the stars, even that night when a mud-clogged motor stranded them, exhausted and ravenous, until their parents arrived like a rescue squad with cheese biscuits.

“We just sat there in the boat eating those biscuits. We could barely hold our eyes open,” Heather chuckles, Becky nodding in rhythm. “But we had a boatload of flounders, and we had spent all night talking to each other.”

The sisters’ bond is as deep as their roots on the Carolina coast. It’s a connection forged in the salt of their shared seafood heritage and tested by the daily demands of the family business.

Despite the relentless labor of running both Blackbeard’s and Rose Seafood Market, and the looming shadow of an uncertain commercial fishing industry, Heather and Becky are unwavering. They’ve made it their mission to keep their landmark corner of Beaufort thriving for the next generation.

A legacy without blueprints

Surrounded by black-and-white snapshots of the commercial fishers and boat builders who came before, the women reflect on the proud way of life handed down to them. Today, the sisters lead that legacy: Heather oversees the seafood market, while Becky serves as the chef and proprietor of Blackbeard’s Grill.

Their ties to the coast reach back to the 1700s, Becky says. Ancestors were boat captains in the Northeast before navigating south to Swan Quarter, where a bay bears the Rose name. Some relatives headed to Cape Lookout, establishing the early Rose Town community.

In 1910, their great-great-grandfather, George Rose, moved his family from the cape to Harkers Island. There, later generations established Rose Brothers Boat Works, which became famous for crafting fine wooden yachts and charter boats built entirely by eye without plans or blueprints.

It was in that boatyard that Heather and Becky’s parents, Rodney and Mary, first met.

Rose Seafood Market was born of necessity. Frustrated by low dockside prices, Rodney and Mary founded the business in 1986 to eliminate the middleman. What started as a backyard mom-and-pop grew into a Marshallberg fish house sourcing from 30 local commercial fishers. By 1993, the couple moved to their current Beaufort location, soon after adding a take-out window. Two years later, they opened Blackbeard’s Grill to highlight “Down East” heritage recipes.

Today, the sisters manage day-to-day operations, with their parents’ constant inspiration and presence. The women draw strength from recollections of their father networking with fishermen, setting the standard for relationship building his daughters rely on today.

Dad, who still fishes, pops in — though not often enough, Heather laments, missing her father — to deliver and help process the catch, as well as share insight with customers about the challenges facing commercial fishers.

Years of watching their mother diplomatically negotiate the sale of thousands of pounds of fish weekly to far-flung markets in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, then turning around to masterfully head shrimp, shuck scallops and pack fish, made anything seem possible.

“Growing up and seeing that, I never felt like a woman was out of place in this industry,” Becky says of the male-dominated seafood sector.

The market still sources catches docked by local commercial fishers, including Heather, and carries beloved Rose family recipes, like their Aunt Dora’s shrimp salad. Locals watch Blackbeard’s specials for regional favorites such as scallop fritters and hard crab stew. Offerings depend on what’s fresh next door.

The scale is staggering. “We’re probably going to feed about 60,000 people here (at Blackbeard’s), and just on five nights that we’re open each week, for the year,” Becky says. Between the restaurant and the market’s grab-and-go section, which Becky stocks with crab pies, lasagnas, shrimp salad and more, the sisters are in a state of constant motion.

“We love the connection,” Becky says. “When you go and catch something yourself, do all the work involved in doing that, and then you prepare it and cook it for somebody, and you hand it to them and they eat it…that’s a feeling that can’t be duplicated in any other way.”

‘Don’t fight it, accept it’

Heather remembers happy childhood days clamming and shrimping with her parents and packing seafood at their then-fledgling business. “I was young, full of energy, you know, and always willing and anxious to help.”

Becky, 11 years younger, was just a toddler at the time, trying to stack boxes in her tiny oilskins. As a youngster, she headed shrimp after school at Rose Seafood in Beaufort and told customers, “My daddy caught these.”

“I still have some older ladies that come here and say, ‘Were you that cute little blonde-headed girl that waited on me in the seafood market?’”

Despite those precious memories, both women envisioned paths away from the water. In college, Becky studied marketing, a talent she skillfully applies to the businesses’ engaging social media feeds. Heather worked for 10 years as an officer with the Morehead City Police Department. Throughout their own careers, both sisters kept a foot in the family seafood business.

“I think both of us felt that was our calling,” Becky reflects.

“There was a time when I was younger, I was always trying to run away from it,” Heather adds.

“Well, I think we both knew how hard it was,” Becky says, finishing her sister’s thought.

The pair’s management era began with the COVID-19 pandemic. When the virus’s spread shuttered dining rooms, the Roses, like many restaurateurs, turned to walking takeout orders to vehicles lined up in the parking lot. By then, the market had closed, but with the public’s limited access to grocers and other seafood outlets, the Roses realized that they needed to reopen the store to sustain the community and their own livelihoods.

Heather had already left police work to help her parents at the restaurant, but she was facing burnout even before the pandemic. That’s when Becky stepped in, leaving an unfulfilling job in the wholesale plant industry to help her family keep up.

“It was really hard on me at first, because I hadn’t really been dealing with seafood for a decade,” she remembers. “It was hard to build up to the strength and endurance that it takes to clean 500 pounds of spots a day, to filet 1,000 pounds of flounder, to head 1,000 pounds of shrimp.”

The sisters stop to compare scars. “You can look at our hands, and you know,” Becky says.

Heather smiles. “Me and Beck, we look at each other when we’re exhausted and we say, ‘Don’t fight it, accept it. This is your calling.’”

‘These are the really special times’

Demanding work and a powerful desire to make their parents proud fuel the sisters’ mission. They also genuinely like their jobs.

Becky, always a foodie, found that working in horticulture deepened her interest in herbs and cooking, setting her up as a chef who understands both local food culture and how to craft contemporary dishes like crispy crab Rangoon with sweet Thai chili sauce or half-shell oysters roasted with bacon jam, a dollop of goat cheese to finish.

“She literally elevates this kitchen to a different level than it’s ever been,” Heather says of her sister. “She has a lot of pride, and she’s, she’s a perfectionist. She wants it to be right and won’t accept it any other way.”

Heather loves nothing more than fishing, but her wide-ranging experience in and outside the business make her indispensable to both operations, Becky says. Heather’s seafood chowder is an enduring menu staple, and she formulated the various breading recipes used to fry different seafoods.

“The tenacity,” Becky says of Heather, “if she makes up her mind that we’re doing something or she’s doing something, she’s doing it…And she can wire things. She’s very mechanical, and I am totally not…So when we come together, we don’t fight or argue like sisters sometimes do. We really work well together.”

Who will take on the business years from now is a constant worry, especially as North Carolina commercial fishers lose docks to new waterfront development. They also face fierce competition from recreational fishing interests with the capital to fund lobbyists and marketing campaigns that, as the sisters see it, demonize fishing families as destroyers of the very resources they depend on.

“We don’t have family to leave it to,” Heather says. “And that makes me very sad,” Becky adds, “and it’s something I think about every night before I go to bed.”

That uncertainty pulls at them, but it hasn’t slowed their pace. Instead of pulling back, the duo doubles down with new ideas, like Heather’s upcoming seafood boils to go and adding beer and wine sales to the market’s offerings. Becky takes on public education, sharing the story of the state’s seafood heritage through speaking engagements and staging fundraising dinners aimed at preserving the commercial fishing way of life.

Both agree they’d like nothing better than to fire up the boat after work more often and head out for an all-nighter. Meantime, they try to live by the advice Becky often gives Heather.

“You’re going to look back on today, and you’re gonna say, ‘Those were good times,’ even if you’re having a bad day here … We got to make the most out of each day, because these are really special times right now for this business and for our family.” 

Registration is open for the 2026 North Carolina Aquaculture Development Conference, a three-day event that focuses on the future of aquaculture in state.

The event, which will be held March 25-27 at they Crystal Coast Civic Center on the Carteret Community College campus in Morehead City, is to include keynote sessions, technical workshops, and interactive discussions on a range of aquaculture species and production systems relevant to the state.

The program is a time for the public, current and aspiring fish farmers, scientists, educators, researchers, students, and agency and regulatory professionals to come together to share ideas, advance best practices, and strengthen connections across the aquaculture community, organizers said.

The Got to Be NC Seafood Expo, which celebrates the state’s seafood industry, will take place during the event, and innovative equipment, technologies, and products will be showcased

There will be a career fair March 25 and attendees may join in at 6 p.m. for trivia night at Tight Lines Pub and Brewing Co. in downtown Morehead City.

Agendas for each day of the conference are available online. To register for the conference and the expo visit https://ncaquaculture.com/registration/.

Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center volunteers are cooking away ahead of the Harkers Island museum’s annual Taste of Core Sound winter edition happening this weekend.

When doors open at 6 p.m. Friday, ticketholders can snack on oysters on the half shell, crab dip, fruit and cheese before the meal is served at 7 p.m. This year’s menu includes Hancock salad, stewed conchs, scallop fritters, crabmeat casserole, garlic shrimp and rice, stewed redheads and rutabaga, chicken and pastry, winter collards, sweet potatoes, squash casserole and light rolls.

Guest speaker, Beaufort native Geoffrey Adair, a retired District Attorney Craven County and historian, will take the podium around 8 p.m., while a dessert of homemade cakes is served.

“Adair, who was born and raised in Beaufort, vividly remembers the smell of Menhaden steamers moored at Beaufort’s docks, the cool air of the season’s first mullet shift and the simple pleasure of swimming across ‘the cut’ on a hot summer’s day,” organizers said.

There will be a live auction of Core Sound decoys at the close of the program.

Tickets are $100 per person for museum members and $125 for nonmembers. Ticket includes annual membership. Purchase tickets through the museum’s website.

From the starvation and struggle of the ill-fated Lost Colony to the house-snatching fury of the latest nor’easter, endurance has always been a primary occupation on North Carolina’s remote Outer Banks. Even today, with soaring bridges and ribbons of asphalt connecting the outside world, a blustery winter day can isolate a soul in relentless gray.

But for locals who call Hatteras Island home, one bite of a savory, golden brown fish cake reminds them why they choose to stay on these unsteady sands.

Sharon Peele Kennedy understood that devotion better than most. A culinary icon known through her cookbook, “What’s for Supper,” and her voice on local radio stations, she was the primary guardian of Outer Banks foodways.

For Kennedy, who passed in January 2024, a plate of fish cakes wasn’t just a meal; it was an essential starting point for stories about the traditional Hatteras way of life she cherished.

To taste a fish cake in the “Banker” style, the name locals use for the ancestral residents of these islands, is to take a bite of history. Born from the resourceful kitchens of coastal families, these aren’t the typical heavily seasoned fried patties. Just as their forebears did at least two centuries ago, cooks here hand-flake fresh, local fish and then gently fold it with mashed potatoes and not much else.

Kennedy’s own recipe was handed down through generations. Her father, Maxton Peele, was a commercial long-haul and pound-net fisherman who cooked “in the traditional island style” of barely seasoning seafood to preserve its delicate flavor, Kennedy wrote in “What’s for Supper.” Her mother, Juanita Peele, was an expert at adding “unexpected touches” to those dishes.

Kennedy started working at Hatteras-area seafood restaurants when she was just 12 and grew up to become a champion for North Carolina’s commercial fishing families.

“This is a very traditional food on these banks,” Kennedy told me while she shaped fish cakes for a 2023 fundraising dinner in Nags Head to benefit NC Catch, a nonprofit promoting North Carolina seafood. 

Usually, leftover fish was “repurposed by mixing it all together … potatoes, onions and fish,” Kennedy said. “A little salt, a little pepper and an egg. And then shape it. That’s it.”

Such simplicity was forged in an era when grocery stores were nonexistent on Hatteras and thrift was the essential lifeline for island families. The first paved road didn’t open until the 1950s, and a boat or ferry was the only access to the island until a bridge opened in 1963. As Kennedy often reminded her audiences, Bankers “used what they had … what grew in the garden.”

Fortunately, fish was plentiful and could be salt-preserved for the larder. Onions and white potatoes – long known as “Irish potatoes” along the North Carolina shore from Virginia to eastern Carteret County – were the other essentials. Both thrived in sandy coastal soil. The humble staples formed the heart of the Banker fish cake.

Those potatoes and onions hint at how fish cakes became a Hatteras Island tradition, though the local recipe’s exact origin and timeline remain a mystery. When English settlers first arrived at Roanoke Island, the British were not yet potato eaters. While Europeans were introduced to the vegetable in the mid-1500s, most did not widely accept it until the 1700s.

While some credit Scandinavian sailors with the invention of potato-based fiskekaker, others point to the coastal traditions of Ireland. There, boiling potatoes in seawater to serve alongside the daily catch was one kind of survival meal, a flavor profile strikingly similar to the fish cake.

Regardless of who first mashed the two together, the concept found a perfect home on the Outer Banks.

For decades, the threat of piracy and the memory of the Lost Colony kept many settlers away from those shores, but by the mid-1600s, potato and onion farming had taken root in the nearby Albemarle region. As piracy dissipated in the early 1700s and more settlers moved to the barrier islands, they brought “Irish potatoes” and onions with them.

All the ingredients were finally lined up for an Outer Banks fish cake. While Kennedy’s cookbook also offered variations made with rice or hush puppy batter, the basic recipe many Hatteras locals use has remained unchanged: a modest, resourceful marriage of the garden and the sea.

As Kennedy shaped fish cakes for that NC Catch dinner at Basnight’s Lone Cedar Café in Nags Head, her son Jeffery Kennedy stepped in to grab a full tray. He gently laid the plump fish cakes into a deep fryer behind his mother. The pair’s easy cadence made it clear that this was not the first time the family had cooked fish cakes together.

Sizzling in oil, the fish cakes sent up a mouthwatering aroma. As Jeffery lifted the golden-brown disks from the fryer, his mother advised that any leftover fish would do – drum, bluefish, speckled trout, mackerel, whatever was available – whether baked, broiled or boiled. Throughout the process, she repeated how easy fish cakes were to prepare, offering not a hint of how utterly delicious they would be.

“Show her Jeffery,” Kennedy told her son. He picked up one of the hot patties and split it open with his hands. Inside, flaked white fish mingled with mashed potatoes, sending up a delectable fragrance. Meaty and substantial, the cake somehow maintained a pillowy texture that contrasted beautifully with its crisp exterior. One bite and I wished I could stay on the Outer Banks forever.

Fish Cakes

4 cups of cooked fish

3 cups of mashed potatoes

1 small onion diced or 1/3 cup chopped green onions

2 eggs, beaten

Salt and pepper

Flake fish in a bowl with mashed potatoes, add onions and beaten eggs, season to taste. Shape into small patties. Fry in about ¼-inch (deep) medium hot oil, until nice and brown.

Source: “What’s for Supper” by Sharon Peele Kennedy

Note: Because cooks often rely on leftover fish for fish cakes, the patties are traditionally enjoyed for breakfast. Try them in place of English muffins, use fried eggs instead of poached on top and skip the bacon for a delicious “eggs Benedict.”

Second installment of a two-part series special to Coastal Review

My mullet-fishing experience began in Carteret County, over half a century ago, but over the subsequent years and many scientific expeditions to find fossils, we have continued to cross paths with our “jumpin’ mullet,” catching them in places as far-flung as Hawaii and seeing them in markets of Europe, Africa, and Madagascar.

We have long marveled that our local tradition for drying mullet roe, which goes back many generations in my wife Lida Pigott’s family, somehow has its roots on the Mediterranean Island of Sardinia, the source of “Cabras gold,” the prized bottarga di muggine of Italian cuisine.

On my first visit to this enchanted island, just off the coast of Italy and second only to Sicily in size in the Mediterranean, I presented a talk at an international meeting of paleontologists and archaeologists on the topic of “Early Man in Island Environments,” featuring my years of work studying prehistoric Madagascar. I was fully captivated by the mysterious Sardinian landscapes, with more than 7,000 ancient ruins from the Neolithic and Bronze Age, some as old as Stonehenge and the pyramids.

I told myself I had to get back to Sardinia one day with more time to absorb it. I knew Lida would love this place because it is so strange and at once familiar. That was 1988.

We finally got back there a few months ago, for a nice long stay, and one of our projects was to explore the very heartland of one of Italian cuisine’s most famous products, bottarga di muggine, our own beloved mullet roe.

The wonderful archaeological museums and sites on the island tell the story well. Big estuaries with hydrology and scale similar to our own Core Sound, known locally as stagno (ponds), have been exploited for mullet seasonally, just as here in coastal NC or Hawaii or hundreds of other places in all the warm oceans of the world.

Mullet have undoubtedly fed Sardinians steadily for 5,000 years or more, from the indigenous Nuragic culture, through successive colonization by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Spaniards, and medieval feudal lords.

In fact, one of the last vestiges of feudalism as an economic strategy anywhere in Europe was the mullet fishery of famous bottarga producers like the Stagno di Mar `e Pontis, near Cabras, Sardinia.

By the mid-1900s this ancient lucrative industry, still owned by what today might be described as an “oligarch,” was regulated through eight levels of bureaucracy, whereby so many folks with fancy titles and allegiance to the “owner” got such large cuts that sometimes not much was left for the fishermen who did the catching.

Long-standing issues flared up regarding the maintenance of the canals to the ocean that have regulated the water flow for centuries, even millennia. Poaching was rampant. The fishery was in a poor state.

Something had to be done, and some violence came with the transition, as fishermen’s consortiums, government officials, and local business interests tried to set things right in a variety of sometimes conflicting ways.

In an infamous 1978 crime incident, the feudal overlord, Don Efisio Carta, was kidnapped by banditi and never found, although a ransom was collected.

By the 1980s, the now outlawed feudal hierarchy had been replaced by a consortium of fishermen’s cooperatives, and to this day they run a thriving fishery based primarily on the mullet and bottarga but also with eel and tuna fisheries, shellfish farming, and other maritime industries to sustain the large work force through the off-season for the migratory mullet.

Over several weeks, Lida and I had been eating seafood, especially targeting bottarga dishes, all over Italy and Sardinia. We were especially excited to arrive in the absolute world capital of the jumpin’ mullet and the bottarga industry, Cabras, for a few days of culinary “mullet research.”

We visited the splendid local museums, but as mullet fishermen ourselves we were just as interested to see where the fishermen store their nets and dock their boats, what kinds of tackle they are using, and what they are generally about.

We were amazed to discover that the Cabras cooperative uses a single type of molded fiberglass skiff, a stout outboard motor of a single brand, and nets nearly all alike in tidy labeled bins and net bags.

As net hangers ourselves, we were impressed that their tackle and techniques looked almost exactly like ours, down to the corks and knots.

The folks at a local store selling bottarga and smoked mullet insisted that, with our interest in the subject, we really had to visit the museum dedicated to the history of the local fishing culture, just down the road a bit.

We walked there along a causeway through the vast wetlands to reach the cluster of buildings on a high place out in the marsh, beside a deep channel leading out into the stagno.

Part of the “fish tourism” project of the Cabras fishermen’s consortium, Mar’e Pontis Museum had a sweet friendly charm that reminded me of our own Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

The site also hosts a great restaurant, featuring local seafood, and an ancient chapel where the fishermen have prayed for safe and productive fishing for almost a thousand years.

From Pinuccio Carrus, a mullet fisherman who also guides museum tours, we learned about the boats, fishing gear, and thousands of years of fishing and fishing culture on this spot.

Probably since the Neolithic, fishermen here used small agile boats made entirely of reeds from the marsh, and some still do.

Wooden rowboats from years past, shaped like large high-ended canoes, similar to the gondolas of Venice, are now mostly rotting in yards, with molded fiberglass being the material of choice for most commercial fishing in the stagno today.

The museum had all kinds of nets and traps, for mullet and eels primarily, including ones that looked like our pound nets and gill nets.

Today, the fishermen use monofilament gill nets almost identical to ours in North Carolina, although the spear-fishing from reed boats is still practiced, too, much as it has been since prehistoric times.

Drawings and photos of fishing activity during the heyday of the feudal fishery show pound nets and fish corrals full of mullet with fishermen standing in their midst, taking them out by hand.

Having done a bit of that myself, I couldn’t help wondering if they had to watch out for stingrays lurking on the bottom of the mass of hemmed-in fish the way we do!

Of all the mullet-based meals of the trip – and there were many all over Italy and Sardinia – one of the most memorable was at the Restaurante de Madre de Rosy Circu in the heart of Cabras, at a junction of several of its ancient labyrinthine streets.

It was the only time anywhere that we dined on an entirely mullet-based pizza. It had a thin crust, a tomato and parsley sauce, and a topping of smoked mullet, sprinkled liberally with ground mullet roe (bottarga), a kind of double-mullet treat!

Another favorite we had several times around the island was a type of thick, rectangular local pasta with tiny clams (vongole veraci) and loads of ground bottarga. One of the best dishes was purple artichokes smothered in thin amber slices of bottarga, a feast for both the eye and palate.

Local shops sold a wonderful pâté made from bottarga and just right for any imaginable cracker.

The mullet fishery of Sardinia, although today only a small fraction of the historical fishery, seems to be doing fairly well. The industry in value-added fish products from local mullet, eel, and tuna seems to be thriving.

One change is that whereas relatively cheap U.S. mullet roe used to be imported salted or frozen to Italian factories for conversion to preciously expensive bottarga (not quite as expensive as caviar, but in that league), fish industries from Carteret County, to Manatee County, Florida (Cortez area) have sprung up that convert local mullet roe to a quality bottarga that sells on the internet for prices similar to the celebrated Sardinian stuff.

Combined with beach tourism and the draw from internationally unique 3,000-year-old giant stone statues (I Giganti di Mont’e Prama), folks there on the Sinis Peninsula seem to make a pretty good living by the stagno.

The mullet still come in large numbers from the sea every year, swelling the estuaries and feeding the people, dolphins, and birdlife, then returning to deeper water to complete their life cycle. Just like back home here in Carteret County,  and virtually all the warm coastal waters of the globe.

Our mullet is a fish for the world, a true cosmopolitan. I’m glad to have made its acquaintance in so many wonderful places.

First of two parts in a series special to Coastal Review

To many Carolinians coming to the beach for a little fishing, the mullet is a lowly baitfish, often cut into strips for bottom fishing. They may confuse it with an unrelated fish in the drum family known locally as the “sea mullet.”

To the folks of Down East Carteret County, and some locals throughout coastal NC, however, the “jumpin’ mullet,” as they call it, owns a special place in their hearts and kitchens. Often known as the grey mullet, flathead mullet, or striped mullet elsewhere in the English-speaking world, Mugil cephalus is a consummate jumper.

Back in 1980, while cutting mullet strips to use on offshore trips on the Carolina Princess with the original owner and captain, the late James “Woo-woo” Harker of Harkers Island, he and I would joke about how much better-flavored they were than the fish that we caught with them to sell at the fish house or that our clients from upstate were seeking on their charter trips with us — red snappers and groupers mostly. (Those were different times!)

For nearly a decade by then, I had been learning from my in-laws, the Pigotts and Nelsons of Carteret County: 1) how to strike-net mullet in a fast shallow-draft boat with lots of gill-net set in a circle around a seething school of mullet; 2) how to charcoal the fillets on pecan wood, for several hundred people at a time if necessary; and 3) how to prepare that most wonderful of eastern North Carolina delicacies – dried mullet roe – the bottarga di muggine of Italian cuisine (more on that later).

Well over a century ago, many Carteret County families literally cast their fates with the mullet fishery. Some of my wife Lida’s relatives even followed the mullet fishery elsewhere, particularly to Cortez and Punta Gorda, Florida, as described by historians Dr. Mary Fulford Green and David Cecelski.

This “mullet fishermen’s migration” showed how important one species of fish can be to human livelihoods and culture, reminiscent of the singular role of cod in European history or salmon for the Northwest Coast Native American tribes and the indigenous Ainu of northern Japan.

But where did North Carolinians pick up mullet fishing and all that goes with it, especially their appetite for the dried egg masses? North Carolina explorer John Lawson wrote in 1709 that eastern parts of the state had “Mullets, the same as in England, and in great Plenty in all places where the water is salt or brackish.”

Perhaps Down Easters may have learned originally about mullet and their fabulous roe from their Native American neighbors in the late 1600s and early 1700s, who undoubtedly knew it well.

Or perhaps, one could speculate, they learned or relearned directly from cultural transmission from Europe. After all, fishermen in this area have been selling mullet roe for export to Italy for many decades. In any case, drying mullet roe for cooking later is part of the “traditional ecological knowledge“ (TEK of anthropological lingo), of eastern Carteret County people.

During World War II, my father-in-law, the late Osborne G. “Bill” Pigott, asked his family back home to send him just one thing – some dried mullet roe. When he heated it on the wood stove in his tent somewhere in France, it drove his tentmates out with its powerful smell. “That was OK,” Bill would recount with a twinkle “more for me that way.”

As Lida and I made our way through the 70s and a subsequent half-century, we crossed paths with the cosmopolitan, under-rated mullet in many improbable places. It’s truly a worldwide fish and fishery, we began to realize, as we encountered them in fish markets of Europe, Africa, Madagascar, Hawaii, and elsewhere.

Part of our research involved excavating fossil sites on islands, to try to better understand past natural and human roles in the drastic environmental changes there. Lida and I feel really lucky to have done island paleoecology all around the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.

Several of our sites on the Hawaiian island of Kaua`i, especially Makauwahi Cave on the south shore, were full of bones of prehistoric mullet, that same Mugil cephalus as our “jumpin’ mullet.”

Sites we excavated and radiocarbon dated showed mullet were there in large numbers thousands of years before the first humans to land on those shores. But we also studied prehistorically managed fishponds, places where the mullet (`ama`ama in Hawaiian) were raised in large numbers.

Oral tradition indicates that mullet were caught in nearby estuaries and transferred live to these ponds, or lured inside through slatted gates. They were kept well-fed on what mullet like best, low-on-the-food-chain treats like algae and zooplankton. These most revered fish were for consumption only by the ali`i or chiefly class. Commoners could make do with ordinary reef fish and such, but for the chief and his guests – it was likely to be `ama`ama.

On outings with my friend Joe Kanahele of Ni`ihau Island, I had the good fortune on several occasions to see how native Hawaiians catch mullet and similar fish today. With an oversized cast net, he would often catch a dozen large fish in one throw, after a careful stalk along a rocky shore.

On the Alakoko (Menehune) Fishpond near Lihu`e, I helped the pondkeeper, Robert Rego, set a gill net across the pond, and we caught and ate some nice mullet — from the same place Hawaiian aquaculturists practiced mullet farming in a pond that our radiocarbon dating had shown they built in the 1300s.

Native Hawaiians were among the first people to build fishponds and cultivate fish on a large scale, but they were certainly not the only ancient folks, as Pliny the Elder writes about Roman fishponds shortly before his demise in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that buried the Pompeii area in 79 C.E.

The magnificent tile mosaics and other art recovered from the buried city included pictures of — you guessed it — mullet. Two kinds actually, our grey, or jumpin’ mullet (cephalo in Italian), and the red mullet (Mullus surmuletus, or triglia di scoglio in Italian).

So the ancient Romans knew all about our dear Carteret County fish, but although Rome might have been the capital of the known world at that time, the real capital of the jumpin’ mullet is arguably the Mediterranean island of Sardinia.

In part 2, Lida and I will make a “culinary pilgrimage” to the very heart of the mullet fishing and bottarga-making industries, along a body of water so much like our own Core Sound. Our cosmopolitan fish was already at the center of the culture there before the time of Stonehenge and the pyramids.

Next in the series: Back to where it all began

Post has been updated.

WANCHESE — Genetic testing of purportedly wild-caught shrimp served earlier this month at dozens of Outer Banks restaurants found that 64% of the shrimp was actually imported.

On behalf of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, SeaD Consulting collected and analyzed shrimp samples from randomly selected seafood restaurants in Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Manteo, Rodanthe, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco, Nags Head and Hatteras, according to a Dec. 17 press release from SeaD.

Of the 44 restaurants tested, 43 had verbally claimed to serve local American wild-caught shrimp, but only 16 — 36% — were found to be serving local shrimp in the tested dishes. The remaining 28 restaurants had served imported farm-raised shrimp, but only one of them admitted it. All 44 of the eateries had used imagery to imply that they served local shrimp. 

“The findings raise concerns about seafood transparency in an iconic coastal region known for its local fishing heritage,” the release said.

Despite the Outer Banks’ poor showing, it was noted that Wilmington did even worse, with an “inauthenticity rate” of 77% in previous testing. 

SeaD (Seafood Development) Consulting, in partnership with Florida State University, holds the patent for the Rapid ID Genetic High-Accuracy Test, or RIGHTTest, that was used in the survey conducted Dec. 2-6. The Southern Shrimp Alliance, an advocacy trade group, has funded the genetic testing of shrimp throughout the region.

Shrimp, the most popular seafood in the U.S., was an $8 billion market in 2025, with Americans consuming 5 pounds per capita of shrimp a year. But it’s not local shrimpers who are raking in big profits.

According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, 93% of the shrimp consumed in the United States comes from overseas, with 1.7 billion pounds of shrimp products imported in 2024, valued at $6 billion. Meanwhile, commercial shrimp harvests in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic declined from $522 million in 2021 to $269 million in 2023; $25 million to $14 million, respectively, in North Carolina. 

The demand for shrimp is only increasing, along with the creativity in how to serve it.

“We don’t need to undersell our industry and our product,” David Williams, a commercial fishery scientist and co-founder of SeaD, told Coastal Review in a recent interview. A generation ago, shrimp cocktail was the extent of its use in most American cuisine; now there’s a dozen different shrimp dishes on menus, he said. “It should be a proud part of our industry”

As the Alliance detailed, imports, depending on the country, can be “dumped” at lower prices because they use cheap labor, and sometimes even forced, trafficked or child labor. Some countries use a lot of antibiotics, or grow shrimp in polluted ponds. A few countries impose tariffs ranging from 13% to 45% on U.S. wild-caught and farmed shrimp.

While most restaurant prices for shrimp dinners are on the higher end of the menu, they’re not reflecting the dock prices, which have remained low. But more recognition for the quality of wild shrimp as a food source would increase its value.

“The only real way of doing that is that people in restaurants appreciate wild caught shrimp,” Williams said. And diners who choose to eat wild seafood should be able to trust that they’re getting what they’re paying for, otherwise, it’s misrepresentation.

“You charge a premium for a product that’s not a premium,” he said.

North Carolina does not have a law that requires restaurants to disclose the origin of shrimp on menus. Certain retail seafood products fall under federal country-of-origin requirements, but they do not apply to restaurants. North Carolina U.S. Rep. David Rouzer, R-7th District, has recently met with the Alliance and others in the industry and is looking into the legislative remedies and other shrimp industry issues.

“Tackling mislabeling is crucial to ensure that consumers receive the shrimp they are sold,” Blake Price, deputy director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance said in the release. “This testing shows American fishermen are regularly losing sales of their own product to shrimp farmed in countries with safety, labor, and environmental abuses.”

Mark Vrablic, general manager of Willie R. Etheridge Seafood in Wanchese, said that he’s not directly aware of Outer Banks restaurants misrepresenting imported shrimp as local. Still, he has had people tell him that they were told the seafood they were served had come from Etheridge’s, when he knew it didn’t.

“I would love for it not to be this way, but I wouldn’t dare sell a farm-raised shrimp and call it domestic,” he told Coastal Review in an interview. People have a right to know what they’re eating, he added. “I’m not going to sell something marked one thing and it’s something else.”

Vrablic, 66, agrees that the biggest problem with imported shrimp is that the dock price shrimpers are paid is almost too low to make it worth the costs and work involved. 

Probably 25 countries send shrimp here, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela, he said.

“When fuels went up real high two years back, (local shrimpers) were going to have to either raise prices or just get out of it, because they were going to go broke,” Vrablic said. Even with gas lower now, he said, the “homeboys” should still be getting prices 30% to 40% higher.

“But because of the millions of pounds of farm-raised that’s available daily, it’s just overwhelming,” he said. “The market is staying down because of the supply.”

Vrablic, who is a member of the Etheridge family, once one of the most powerful fishing clans on the Outer Banks, began fishing when he was 14 years old, and later joined the family restaurant business for a few years before taking over commercial management and sales.

Until about 20 years ago, shrimping was a short summer fishery in North Carolina, he said. But as the climate changed, the waters warmed to the shrimp’s liking. Now the season stretches from July Fourth until December or later.

“I don’t like imports, Vrablic said. “They’ve crushed us like cockroaches. They’ve taken our markets away, and our fishermen can’t get the fair share what they should be getting. When I fished, I made a lot of money. We didn’t have imports.”

But the fact is, he said, the increased demand for shrimp on the Outer Banks, and elsewhere, exceeds what local shrimpers can catch. And almost all farm-raised shrimp is from overseas.

“We produce shrimp in this country, but we do not produce enough,” Vrablic said, and referred to the 1.7 billion pounds that were imported last year. “Where would we find something like that?”

To his point, he explained, Etheridge Seafood doesn’t have the capacity or bargaining power to meet the volume of the demand.

“We keep a heavy inventory of shrimp, and it’s just the whole world dumps on us,” Vrablic said.

Bottom line, Vrablic says that something has to be done about the unfair competition from imported shrimp. Ideally, restaurants and fish markets should prioritize serving local catch, but when they can’t, they need to be honest about the origin of the shrimp they’re selling. And it would help if consumers remember that wild-caught shrimp also is a seasonal product.

“When restaurants say ’Mark, what will we do if we went three or four months without shrimp?’ I said, ‘If I got no shrimp … we could treat it like we do soft crabs or scallops or oysters when it comes in season.’ People come buy them just like they do watermelons. When it comes out of season, guess what? You come up short.

“Then they’ll just buy more fish from me,” he said, “because they can’t compete with me with fresh fish.”

The following eateries on the Outer Banks found to be serving authentic, American, wild-caught shrimp in the random sample of 44 restaurants:

1. 1587 Restaurant & Lounge, 405 Queen Elizabeth Ave, Manteo.
2. Barefoot Bernie’s Tropical Grill & Bar, 3730 N. Croatan Highway, Kitty Hawk.
3. Basnight’s Lone Cedar Café, 7623 S Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head.
4. Coastal Cravings, 1209 Duck Road, Duck.
5. Goombays Grille & Raw Bar, 1608 N. Virginia Dare Trail, Kill Devil Hills.
6. Greentail’s Seafood Market and Kitchen, 3022 S. Croatan Highway Unit 34, Nags Head.
7. I Got Your Crabs Shellfish Market and Oyster Bar, 3809 N. Croatan Highway, Kitty Hawk.
8. Lucky 12 Tavern, 3308 S. Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head.
9. O’Neal’s Sea Harvest, 618 Harbor Road, Wanchese.
10. Outer Banks Brewing Station, 600 S. Croatan Highway, Kill Devil Hills.
11. Red Sky Casual Dining & Cocktails,1197 Duck Road, Duck.
12. Roadside Bar & Grill, 1193 Duck Road, Duck,.
13. Sea Chef Dockside Kitchen, 8770 Oregon Inlet Road, Nags Head.
14. The Paper Canoe, 1564 Duck Road, Duck.
15. Village Table & Tavern, 1314 Duck Road, Duck.
16. Vicki B’s Restaurant & Market, 301 Budleigh St., Manteo.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries reminds seafood dealers that they need to switch from the PC Trip Ticket Software Program to the new VESL software by the end of the year to report their transactions with fishermen.

The division’s Trip Ticket Program was notified earlier this year that the software contractor, Bluefin Data, will no longer support the old program as of Jan. 31, 2026. Due to these changes:

All electronic trip tickets for calendar year 2025 should be entered through the PC Trip Ticket Software Program by Jan. 10, 2026.

All electronic trip tickets for calendar year 2026 should be entered in the VESL system.
Bluefin Data released the web-based VESL program for North Carolina in January 2025. To use VESL, dealers need a valid email address to create an account on the VESL platform and an internet connected device with a web browser.

Seafood dealers who have not already done so should contact Trip Ticket Program staff at the following email addresses or phone numbers to set up an account:

• Josh Beil — Joshua.Beil@deq.nc.gov or 252-515-5549.
• Travis Williams — Travis.Williams@deq.nc.gov or 252-515-5550.

The Division’s Trip Ticket Program was implemented in 1994 when North Carolina law mandated trip level reporting of all commercial fishery landings. The program requires seafood dealers to complete a trip ticket for each transaction with a fisherman and to submit these reports monthly to the Division of Marine Fisheries.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, in partnership with the North Carolina Sea Grant, have received a $529,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to “strengthen and expand” the state’s growing shellfish mariculture industry.

The Coastal Federation said Thursday in a release that the money will help build on more than a decade of collaboration among the organization, state agencies, industry leaders, N.C. Sea Grant, and other partners across the “coast to grow a thriving mariculture sector that supports local oyster growers, clean water, and coastal economies.”

The previous work includes the Coastal Federation’s community-supported efforts to restore oysters and the work being done through the North Carolina Oyster Blueprint, which recommended developing a network of shellfish aquaculture hubs. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“This support from NOAA is a major step forward for North Carolina’s mariculture industry,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said in a statement. “It will provide growers with additional stability, infrastructure, and tools they need to build strong businesses while protecting the clean water and healthy habitats our coastal economy depends on.”

The funding is to be used for a handful of purposes, including the management and operations of the Shellfish Mariculture Hub in Carteret County. The first-of-its-kind hub is designed to provide growers with reliable support for water access, storage, logistics, and distribution, filling what the nonprofit calls a critical gap in the industry.

“Ensuring strong and effective management will be essential for the Hub’s long-term success,” recipients said.

The grant also will go to initiating a stakeholder group made up of growers, researchers, state agencies, and industry partners to establish North Carolina’s first commercial shellfish hatchery. The group will evaluate options and determine the best path forward to secure the reliable seed supply needed to sustain and expand shellfish farming across the state, officials said.

In addition, funds will go to expand outreach for the NC Oyster Trail, which highlights the cultural, economic, and environmental importance of shellfish while strengthening tourism and community ties. There are more than 90 sites on the trail, including shellfish farm tours, seafood restaurants and markets, and educational organizations like aquariums and museums.

“The NC Oyster Trail is a critical marketing tool to ensure high demand for our state’s shellfish as well as continued support for coastal protection and restoration. It’s a gateway to understand the full impact of the oyster on our coast,” said North Carolina coastal economics specialist Jane Harrison.

The grant also will go to support growers near Stump Sound, a community in North Topsail Beach where shellfish farming takes place alongside a variety of other coastal uses.

“By fostering dialogue and cooperation, the effort will help ensure that Stump Sound continues to be a place where diverse coastal traditions and industries can thrive together,” the organization said.

If you travel sandy coast lines anywhere in this country you will see piers. They are popular places to visit the beach without getting sandy, to enjoy the sea, and, of course, to go fishing.

Unfortunately, too many people who try to fish at our piers won’t really have any success and will be disappointed. Here are a couple of tips to help you find some good action at any of our piers.

For starters, we need to determine what is meant by a pier. I’m talking about a structure built on pilings that is above the surface of a body of water. Specifically, we will be directly referring to those that are on ocean beaches.

Along the North Carolina coast, we have them almost everywhere, from Avalon in the north at Kill Devil Hills, as far south as Sunset Beach.

Each of them will have local technical expertise that will separate the rookies from what we used to call “The Sharpies,” however there are things that we’re here to talk about to get us all started.

On all piers, there are fish to possibly be caught from the front, to the very end. As Maria from “The Sound of Music” always says, “Let’s start at the beginning. A very good place to start.”

When you first venture across the sand, there will be fish right in the surf zone. From there on, pan-sized fish that are very popular to pursue, both for their willingness to get involved and the pleasure they bring when we get them home, will be present. There’s a very simple way to get them, but as with all things to do with fishing, it’s the details that make the day.

Use with a light rod. Something that can handle a 15-pound test braided line and a 1-ounce pyramid sinker without flexing all the way down, but with a responsive tip. There will be a myriad of options for bait fishing rigs for sale in the shops and at the pier itself. If you are able, forgo those choices and make your own.

Start with a monofilament line that is no more than 30-pound test. Do not, repeat NOT, use anything with wire. Tie in two dropper loops (diagrams available wherever diagrams are sold), attach a small orange bead and a size 1/0 circle hook to one, then a pink bead and the same kind of hook to the other.  If you don’t want to tie your own, purchase the one that is the closest to this description. This is THE main difference between people catching, and those watching.

There are lots of options for bait, depending on your industriousness and abilities. The top would be sand fleas that you just dug from the surf yourself. There are those who will par boil them quickly and freeze. Next choice would be pieces of fresh shrimp. (You’ll notice I don’t mention frozen shrimp). Regardless, most savvy anglers also use a very small piece of Fishbites brand in the shrimp flavor, which is a scent infused natural product that adds appeal. It’s available everywhere. 

Bites will come as fast taps. With the circle hooks you will not miss as many strikes as you will otherwise if you happen to leave your rod unattended.

A note about that: I once lost a rod while fishing a live minnow from the pier untended. Guy standing there said, “Shot out there about 10-, 15-foot.”

This method will work for pompano, sea mullet, or pretty much anything that frequents the surf zone. If spots are running, substitute with sea worms for bait and try a size 2 hook. That usually happens in fall. Let me add that being observant to successful people is a good idea and most are glad to help.

Most piers have a rule limiting anglers to two rods. Not everyone follows. But if you do, your other rod should be set up with a Gotcha/Jerk Jigger plug. This is a lure that when it’s retrieved with a twitch-pause retrieve, won’t pop out of the water while being high up in the air like on a pier.

Attach it to your line with a 30-pound monofilament leader. They are so effective that some people use them all the time wherever bluefish, Spanish mackerel, or false albacore are surface feeding. But on the deck of the pier is where they shine. Not just for blues, macs, and albies either.

If you look down at the base of the pilings you will see a depressed area around each. By simply yo-yoing your plug around each piling, there is a good chance of hooking a flounder.

With a simple variation you can have a productive lure to catch anything that swims. To the end of your line, tie a three-way swivel. Tie two lengths of 20-pound line. Leave the first piece 3 feet long and the second piece 2 feet long. To the longer length attach a Gotcha plug. Any color is good as long as it’s red and white. To the shorter length tie on a D.O.A. shrimp lure in literally any color.

If fish are visible feeding on the surface, retrieve as always. If not, use a lift fall retrieve as if you’re jig fishing. Strikes will come on the drop and will be on either lure, with some large speckled trout falling to the plastic shrimp.

I’m pretty confident that with those two rods rigged and ready you will have a good chance of having success on any pier anywhere. Having said that, make sure to have a few extra of everything. Also, a fish finder rig with a piece of mullet has a chance to do SOMETHING on a day when not much else seems to be happening. Of course be ready if someone is getting and you are not, and switch it up if necessary.

Finally, fishing is supposed to be relaxing. If you’re on the pier on a busy fall day when the spots are thick, be prepared to get tangled up with someone. Just part of the way it goes. You can make your day better, or worse, by the way you handle it.

 Preparing pompano for the table

Start by completely removing the head and all entrails (ew). Now hold what’s left by the tail and scrape your knife from the back to front to remove the small scales. When you get it all it will not sound so … scrapey(?) Clean your knife blade and run it along a steel to tighten up your blade edge. Cut through the skin just to the backbone several times on each side. This is called scoring. Dust very lightly with flour and season liberally with whatever spices you like. Old Bay goes nicely.

Heat a nonstick sauté pan over medium heat with butter until it gets foamy.

Lay the fish in the pan and leave it alone. Don’t touch it, slide around, or otherwise touch it, if you mess with it, you will ruin it. After a few minutes the edges will change color slightly and will begin to come off the pan. When it’s done it will come loose and then you will see a beautiful crust has formed. Turn it over now.

Drop in a couple knots of butter and let it melt. Spoon the melted butter over the top. It won’t take long. Have a plate ready. Serve with fresh vegetables and some good bread. This is a solid date night recipe. Good luck.

A discussion about a proposal to transfer the Division of Marine Fisheries from the Department of Environmental Quality to the state agriculture department looms large on the list of priorities for a newly formed alliance created to support North Carolina’s commercial fishing industry.

During the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition’s second meeting Sept. 16 at the Crystal Coast Civic Center in Morehead City, Dare County Board of Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard explained that the proposal was floated after asking commercial fishermen about their concerns.

Among those issues were catch limits, water quality, educating the rest of the state on coastal issues, predation management, and the idea that Woodard called “a big one.” 

“It’s a biggie, is moving the director of Marine Fisheries to the Department of Agriculture,” Woodard said.

The Division of Marine Fisheries provides staff support to the state Marine Fisheries Commission, which is a nine-member board appointed by the governor that manages fisheries in coastal and joint waters.

Woodard initiated the alliance in a July 3 letter to other coastal counties after a state Senate committee amended a House bill that would “prohibit the use of trawl nets to take shrimp in coastal fishing waters or the Atlantic Ocean within one-half mile of the shoreline.”

House Bill 442 was first introduced in March with the stated intention of opening fishing for summer flounder and red snapper, but Senate added the trawl ban language before approving the measure. Despite a handful of “noes” from a few coastal Republican senators and a well-attended protest organized by commercial fishing interests, the amended bill was approved June 19 in a nearly unanimous vote and sent back to the House to consider. House leaders announced on June 25 that the House would not take up the bill.

The coalition held its first meeting Aug. 5, also in Morehead City, and plans are in motion for the next meeting to be Nov. 5 at the same location.

“I think we’re making some really, really positive headway with respect to this coalition,” Woodard said as he called the meeting to order.

Woodard also explained that the Food and Drug Administration has warned that the public should avoid eating imported shrimp potentially contaminated with radioactive material that may have been sold at Walmart in 13 states.

“This is exactly what we’re talking about, folks. Folks sitting around this table, we want to eat local shrimp, and we want to eat it out of clean waters. Americans are being warned not to eat or sell or serve certain Great Value, raw, frozen shrimp sold at Walmart after toxic levels of radioactive materials were detected in just one sample,” said Woodward, noting that the FDA states in its press release that the suspect shrimp had been imported from Indonesia.

“This is this is what we’re dealing with,” Woodard reiterated, adding that nothing is more important than protecting the livelihood of commercial fishermen and local seafood.

As part of that focus, the coalition members has since the first meeting been talking to those in the commercial fishing industry about their concerns. The coalition was tasked with breaking down the list of 10 issues into four priorities.

The priorities to which they agreed to and ranked in order of importance are education, fisheries limits and water quality, legislative items, and predation management.

Regarding the top priority, education, the goal is to inform the rest of the state, local governments, the legislature and consumers about the commercial fishing industry.

Currituck County Commissioner Janet Rose pointed out that consumers are statewide but don’t have a seat at the table. “I think we really need to play into the consumers. I think that’s important.”

For priority No. 2, water quality decline and limits and rules for crabbing, shrimp and flounder, Pasquotank County Commission Chairman Lloyd Griffin said the “biggest opponent right now is the five highways that come to eastern North Carolina.”

“We’re fighting stormwater runoff. We’re fighting the closures because of the stormwater runoff. We have more people that want to live on the coast because of the quality of life. So our roads are our issue,” Griffin said. “You really want to be conscious of is what is happening with our closures because those closures do have an impact.”

The suggestion to move the Division of Marine Fisheries to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Marine Fisheries Commission data sharing and transparency, and testing for restaurants to back up local seafood claims, all fall under the third priority: legislative items.

Carteret County Commissioner Chris Chadwick spoke up in support of the idea of the division being under the Department of Agriculture.

“Shrimpermen, fishermen and floundermen and all that, they are food producers. The only difference — they don’t own the land. They’re out there in the public water. But I think it would be a much more friendly atmosphere over there. Maybe less political. Hopefully less political,” Chadwick said.

Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, was in attendance, and she told the coalition she understands fish issues and the environmental constraints.

As a representative, Harrison said “it’s incumbent on us to educate our colleagues and these folks back here have done a really excellent job of that,” adding that it has been interesting to counter the bad facts that have been floating around the legislature.

Marine Fisheries’ ‘early history’

During the meeting, two scientists who have retired from the North Carolina Department of Marine Fisheries were invited to speak about their time as public servants.

Cornell Purvis, who acted as director for Marine Fisheries from 1978 to 1992, said that “in the last 40 years, Marine Fisheries has been the red-headed stepchild of state government, but it didn’t start out that way. It started out with something that needs to be celebrated. I’m here today to lift the truth and to celebrate the early history of Marine Fisheries.”

He said that, going back 50 years, it “was all old school,” while under the leadership of the division’s third director, the late Ed McCoy. Purvis called him “the brainchild behind the focus on the science and the focus of connection with the fishermen.”

The director taught his staff that they were public servants who served the fishermen in the state. “He told us experience is the best teacher. It’s always the best teacher. These fishermen already know it. We have to learn what they already know and put it in scientific terms.”

Jess Hawkins, previously the chief of fisheries management for the division, worked in state government for 30 years, with much of that time in fisheries regulation. His role with the division was to coordinate rulemaking for the Marine Fisheries Commission.

So, how did the state get to a point where a bill proposing a flounder season was transformed into banning shrimp trawling in estuarine and a coastal waters, he said. “How does that happen in our state?”

Hawkins said the trawl amendment “did not spontaneously develop. It was a chronic process of what I believe is failed governance, and education is a key component of that.”

He added that his comments were intended to help, not disparage, before reciting a brief history of the last few decades of fisheries management.

The Fisheries Reform Act of 1997, which was passed with bipartisan support, “set the foundation for fisheries management in North Carolina and it was an epiphany for our state,” Hawkins said.

The act was meant to transform how the state manages its fish, and set the structure for the Marine Fisheries Commission, established the science-based management system, and required fisheries management plans for all commercially and recreationally important fisheries. The act also provided an avenue for robust public engagement through advisory committees.

When Hawkins retired in 2006, he was managing 25 advisory committees, and now there are seven, prompting his concerns with the public input or stakeholder process.

“My observation is — and following fisheries policy in our state since I’ve retired — is the last 15 years or so, the stakeholder input process of the Fishery Reform Act has been corrupted,” Hawkins said.

The process to build a fisheries management plan begins in a committee, but “right now your fishery management plan committee only meets once,” which used to meet consistently, Hawkins said, the same as the standing and regional committees.

The North Carolina General Assembly requires the Marine Fisheries Commission chair to establish a committee that helps develop the management plan. “The executive branch has interpreted that, that they only need to meet once. During which time, they only share ideas, then staff “assimilate the ideas and go off and work on the plan,” Hawkins said. The committee never gets to review the draft plan before it goes before the commission. “So, that process has been corrupted.”

The habitat and water quality advisory committee used to meet monthly, but in the years since Hawkins retired, he said that the committee has never met. And the finfish committee should have been able to review the flounder fishery management plan, but during some years, it never had the opportunity.

Hawkins also pointed to what he called a lack of dialogue between the public and the fisheries commission, particularly limiting, he said, is the three-minute time limit per person during the public comment portions of commission meetings.

“The silence about seafood consumers in our state when we manage our resources is deafening. There’s very little regard to that, very little discussion of that,” Hawkins said.

There is advocacy for consuming domestic seafood, and it is known that the country has a well-managed seafood system management system that inspects the product caught in the United States, but “We only inspect 1-2% of our foreign seafood, yet we import 85%. We import 90% of our shrimp and yet we have a bill that’s introduced to even stop the shrimp harvest based on no scientific reason of shrimp populations being harmed.”

Hawkins gave the coalition a list of his proposed legislative changes that he said he had also sent to legislators over the years. None have been approved.

“North Carolina cannot afford to continue to rely on the leadership that changes with the gubernatorial office every four years to manage our seafoods. It can’t do that. There needs to be changes,” he said.

Second in a series on a recent visit to Louisiana’s bayous, a trip sponsored by the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, to start a conversation between people there who are being flooded out and those in the Down East communities of Carteret County who face similar threats.

BAYOU LAFOURCHE, La. – Eric Verdin clearly knew where he was going. These waters are like family, after all, but his GPS plotter was frantic. Using the latest marine charts, its line tracing our path on the screen in front of us blinked red, warning us that we were about to plow into dry land. It was a good time, it seemed to suggest, to ABANDON SHIP. But we had open seas ahead of us and 8 feet of water under our keel.

“There used to be an orange grove here,” our captain conceded with a shrug.

Not a hundred years ago. Not 50. Not even 20. “Not that long ago, really,” Verdin said, as he looked out the window of the shrimp boat’s pilot house across the placid water of the bayou to the glimmering Gulf of Mexico on the horizon. “Just about all that water you see in front of us was all marsh.”

His native people, the Biloxi-Chitimacha, have lived on the fringes of this watery world along the southwestern tip of Louisiana for many generations. Verdin, 58, has known these waters since boyhood. He makes his living here, first running big boats to supply the oil rigs out in the Gulf and now chasing brown and white shrimp. He’s witnessed changes he never thought possible. “I’ve seen the absolute devastation of our coast during my lifetime,” he said with a sigh. “Miles and miles of marsh are now open waters.”

Nowhere on Earth does land disappear as quickly as it does here in southern Louisiana. According to one fantastic estimate, the water covers, on average, a chunk of marsh the size of a football field every hour or so. Or is it 15 minutes? No matter. The change is so rapid that not even online navigation charts can keep up. Brought about by a catastrophic combination of human engineering, ignorance and hubris, it’s been going on, though more slowly, for at least a century. During that time, an area of marshland the size of Delaware vanished. Now, add another human-induced insult — rising seas triggered by the warming climate — and a similar-sized piece is expected to disappear in just 25 years.

This is ground zero for sea level rise and wetland loss in the world. We, of course, had to see it ourselves.

A group of North Carolinians, on a 10-day trip sponsored by Duke University, toured coastal Louisiana in June looking for connections, for people at the water’s edge who are facing the perils wrought by a rapidly changing environment. They have weathered the frequent storms, survived the destructive aftermaths, and found ways to accommodate the rising seas as the familiar natural world transforms in the blink of their lifetimes. Some of their communities have been displaced, and their cultures are threatened.

Coastal people back home will soon increasingly confront the same dangers, knows Karen Amspacher, a native of Harkers Island in Carteret County, the director of a cultural museum there and the group’s inspirational leader. “We’re all living on the edge,” she told Verdin after he welcomed us aboard his 55-foot shrimper, Lil’E. “I’ve been trying to find common ties with people who are going through what we will.”

After the bayous of Louisiana and Florida’s Gold Coast, the uniformly flat North Carolina coastal plain is the most-endangered landscape in America. The small fishing and farming villages of low-lying eastern Carteret County, Amspacher’s beloved Down East, face a grim future of increasing storms and flooding. Many of the homes will become uninhabitable by century’s end.

Jerrica Cheramie understands all too well the fears that the people there will have to confront. “I’m just 36 and I’ve seen all this change,” said the local high school teacher who joined us on the boat. “It’s terrifying.”

Taming A River

Since its beginning, the Mississippi River has deposited the silt of a continent to build the Louisiana coastline. Its delta, a water-logged labyrinth of bayous, marsh grasses and ancient cypress trees, fans out like a swampy snout into the Gulf. The first European settlers along the lower Mississippi in the 18^th century started throwing up dirt walls along the river’s banks to protect themselves from the frequent floods. The effort intensified a century later after a series of devastating deluges. Congress got involved after the Great Flood in 1927 killed 500 people and inundated 27,000 square miles. It authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to begin digging. That old river man, Mark Twain, once scoffed at the notion of containing the mighty Mississippi. “Ten thousand River Commissions …,” he wrote, “cannot tame that lawless stream … cannot say to it, ‘Go here,’ or ‘Go there,’ and make it obey.”

By God, they tried, and they came damn close. Close enough, anyway, to make southern Louisiana disappear.

Today, massive levees line the river for about half of its 2,400-mile-long route to the sea. Along the very southern leg of its journey, the Mississippi is little more than a big canal, hemmed in place by huge earthen walls.

We followed it one day for its last 75 miles. Down Louisiana Highway 23 we went, through Bohemia and Port Sulfur, past Home Place and Triumph, to Venice, population 164. It’s as far as you can go by car. The river was on our left the entire way, but it flowed unseen behind its wall. The smokestacks of the ships we passed were the only hints that the river was actually there. At the end of the road, we had hoped to watch the great Mississippi make its last, lumbering lurch to the Gulf. Alas, there was nothing to see but more marsh, the wall and assorted bits of industrial detritus – cranes, barges, pipes, barrels and such. More on that shortly.

As we stood at the end of the road expressing our disappointment, a set of eyes popped up through the murky water of a lagoon that wasn’t 20 feet away. Then, another. Soon, it was a dozen. Then, more. I had never seen so many alligators in one place at a time, and I once lived in Miami and fished the Everglades in a canoe. They all came toward us, gliding silently through the water, leaving gentle wakes behind them. Our presence clearly triggered this conclave. Other gawkers, we surmised, had also come this way and had fed the native wildlife. The approaching gators were expecting a handout. What tidbits do you toss to giant reptiles? I wondered as we quickly headed back to the cars. A bucket of Col. Sanders? A Big Mac? Chick-fil-A nuggets, we agreed. Everything likes them.

After that meander worthy of the old Mississippi, let’s get back on course. The point of all this is that the river now heads straight to the Gulf. No more oxbow cutoffs, no twists, no turns. With it, goes all that muck. Very little now leaks into the surrounding bays. Without sediment to nourish them, the marshes have been sinking for a long time. They are drowning more quickly now as sea level rise accelerates.

Big, Big Oil

Verdin killed the engine and dropped anchor. We bobbed under a scorching sun in languid Lake Raccourci. A lot of open water bodies on the Gulf’s fringes in Louisiana are called lakes because they were surrounded by marsh when the mapmakers named them. To Verdin, these are sacred waters. His son, Eric Jr., died in a car wreck five years ago. He was only 34. His family spread his ashes here, one of his “honey holes.” Verdin named his boat after Eric and put a picture of his smiling son in a frame on the bulkhead behind the ship’s wheel. “He always used to stand behind me and say go this way or that way,” his father explained. Verdin comes back often, especially on the anniversary of his son’s death in December when he places flowers in the water. He couldn’t think of a better place to take visitors. We were honored.

We were also surrounded by an odd array of pipes, pumps and iron platforms that rose out of the water everywhere. Rust was their primary color. Each one marked an oil or natural gas well, Verdin explained, and most are still producing, though some are approaching 100 years old. They are relics, really, of simpler times, when the Gulf was just becoming America’s great oilfield.

Like the deltas of many of the world’s great rivers, the Mississippi’s is full of oil and gas. All that muck that the river deposited for millions of years contained the organic ingredients — ancient plants, algae, bacteria – of oil and gas. They’re called fossil fuels for a reason. Time and heat did the rest.

I sat one night on the beach at Grand Isle, one of the few sandy beaches in the lower bayous, and counted the lights of 22 offshore oil rigs blinking on the horizon. There are more than 600 out there, making the Gulf of Mexico America’s primary source for offshore oil and natural gas.

Big Oil is really big here. Its presence is almost everywhere: Refineries with their fiery tails of methane, mountains of pipeline stacked in neat pyramids, natural gas liquification plants, petrochemical complexes, miles of storage tanks, acres of stacked barrels. All in industrial grimy gray with splashes of white. It ain’t pretty and there’s likely no way to make it so.

From Lake Raccourci, we could see the outline of Port Fourchon, maybe 8 miles away. It is Big Oil’s most important port. More than 400 ships leave it every day to supply the rigs. More than 15,000 people fly out of there every month to work on them. It’s the operational base for almost 300 companies. The port is perched at the tail end of LA1, a vital road so threatened that it’s being raised on a causeway to keep it from slipping under the Gulf.

Before all that, there were these pipes now sticking out of the water. The reservoirs closest to shore were, naturally, the first to be tapped, starting in the 1930s. The companies dug canals through the dense marshland to dig the wells. The channels ended up becoming pathways for water, accelerating the marsh’s demise. Many of the wells are now miles from the nearest dry land.

Everybody understands the role the oil and gas industry played in destroying the marshes, Verdin explained as the shrimp were almost ready for lunch. “In hindsight, it ruined our environment, but you won’t find fishermen around here who are anti-oil.” he said. “We know how much we’ve benefitted. When the fishing was good, we fished. When oil was booming, we worked in oil.”

The Diversion

Verdin spilled the pot of boiled shrimp, corn on the cob and potatoes onto one of the hatch covers, and we dug in. The lunchtime conversation turned to The Diversion, the first step of a grand ecosystem experiment that would have taken 50 years to complete and would have cost more than $50 billion. Officially known as the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, the controversial project intended to divert some of the Mississippi’s flow to allow sediment to once again nourish portions of the marsh. “We need to do something,” Verdin said. “This can’t go on.”

That was the state’s conclusion after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region 25 years ago last month. Healthy marshes, scientists said, would have lessened the damage. In response, the state legislature in 2007 passed the first coastal master plan, a 50-year initiative to blunt the forces eating away at the coastline: sinking land, rising seas, and the channels dug by the oil and gas industry. Barrier islands would be rebuilt, levees bulked up, and structures raised. The plan also endorsed 11 river-diversion projects. The biggest was in Barataria Bay, about 30 miles east of our lunchtime anchorage. Engineers planned to poke a hole into the levee near Ironton in Plaquemines Parish and release 75,000 cubic feet of sediment every second. They estimated that doing so every day for six months a year would create 21 square miles of new marsh in 50 years. “It gives us a fighting chance to win this battle,” Chip Kline, the chairman of the state authority charged with the task, said in 2021.

Others weren’t so sure. Fishermen worried that the sudden influx of freshwater would push oysters and brown shrimp, mainstays of the local fishing industry, out of their current ranges. Federal scientists feared that the salinity drop could cause skin diseases in the bay’s dolphins, killing maybe a third of them. Opponents noted that even if it completes everything in the plan, the state will still lose more wetlands – 2,300 square miles — than it saves or creates – 1,200 square miles.

The scheme went on life support the day voters sent Jeff Landry to the governor’s mansion in 2023. He had been a staunch opponent of the project as attorney general, questioning its ballooning cost — $3.1 billion — and claiming it would kill fisheries important to Cajun culture. A month after our visit, Landry canceled the project.

Its demise didn’t likely lessen Charamie’s resolve “People ask why do I live here?” she said before we said our goodbyes back at the dock. “Where am I to go? This is home.”

It would be a sentiment we would hear again and again.

Next: Life on the edge.

More than half of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties will be represented at the launch of what commercial shrimping advocates envision as an organization poised to fight for the industry in Raleigh.

The inception of the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition is set to kick off in an Aug. 5 meeting in Morehead City, where coastal-based local and state elected officials and their constituents are invited to converge, discuss and formulate a plan to combat what they deem politically charged threats to commercial fishers.

“Bottom line, simple mission statement: We want to provide fresh, local seafood for our citizens and visitors and protect the livelihoods and families that harvest it,” said Dare County Board of Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard. “We’re going to do everything humanly possible to protect our commercial fishermen.”

The meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. in the Crystal Coast Civic Center’s main hall, 203 College Circle.

The idea to form a coastwide coalition to defend and protect the state’s commercial fishing fleet sprouted fresh on the heels of a fierce fight that ensued in the North Carolina Legislative Building in late June.

That’s when a last-minute amendment to ban shrimp trawling in inland and nearshore coastal waters was tucked into a House bill originally authored to expand recreational access to southern flounder and red snapper. A companion bill, House Bill 441, was gutted and revised to establish a program that would pay out annual installments over three years to qualifying shrimpers.

In what quickly became referred to as “Shrimpgate,” hundreds of commercial shrimpers and their supporters, backed by coast-based legislators in both chambers and on both sides of the political aisle, flocked to Raleigh to oppose House Bill 442, one they argued would have effectively shuttered the state’s shrimping industry.

After a near weeklong bout, House Republicans announced June 25 they would not take up the bill with the changes senators had added.

It was a victory for what commercial shrimping advocates say is only one battle in a war they believe has not reached an end.

“Heck no,” the fight isn’t over, Woodard said. Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, has “already said that. When they go back in session in September, who knows. I’m not sure where they’re going with it, but that fight ain’t over.”

Berger, back in June, called the amendment to the bill “a good provision.”

“It’s our position that continuing to allow trawling in inland waters is detrimental to the state overall [and] detrimental to our aquatic fish population,” he said to reporters from various media outlets. “We’re the only state on the East Coast or the Gulf Coast that allows that kind of net fishing in the inland waters and it’s time for us to change that.”

Groups, including the Coastal Conservation Association – North Carolina, or CCA-NC, and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, have long argued that shrimp trawling harms other fisheries, including juvenile fish, and degrades essential habitats.

Commercial fishing proponents refute those claims, saying that the state’s fisheries management plan for shrimp already protects sensitive habitat and juvenile fish. Commercial fishing is heavily regulated in North Carolina, where trawlers are required to have equipment on their boats that prevent and reduce bycatch.

Woodard noted that argument in a June 30 letter he penned to Berger, writing in part, “regulations are already in place that significantly reduce bycatch in shrimp nets.”

Woodard also called out the eleventh-hour injected amendment to House Bill 442 as a move that “bypassed due process by attaching negative amendments to this bill without public debate or discussion.”

Three days after signing that letter, Woodard dispersed one to chairs of coastal county commissions announcing his proposal to establish the coalition. In it, he welcomed them to extend an invitation to other counties that may wish to get involved.

As of midday Friday, 11 coastal counties including Brunswick, Camden, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Dare, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Tyrrell and Washington had appointed members of their boards of commissioners to the coalition.

At least four members of the Carteret County Board of Commissioners plan to attend the Aug. 5 meeting, Chair Chris Chadwick said.

“But I’m hoping to have a whole group,” he said. “You can’t try to ram something down somebody’s throat and eliminate an industry without involving the people where the industry exists. When you have somebody from Winston-Salem trying to tell you what’s best for you on the coast without involving the people on the coast, that’s a problem in my book. We look forward to a productive meeting and the beginning of something strong and a powerful organization that can go to Raleigh and advocate for the coastal counties.”

Onslow County Board of Commissioners Chair Tim Foster expressed similar sentiments.

“I think when it comes to this, the coastal counties really need to come together and show that unified support of what’s taking place,” he said. “When you see decisions that are being made that impact your communities, but you don’t see yourselves as having a voice on this, this coalition becomes that. We have Sneads Ferry that’s historically a fishing village and an industry that has grown and it impacts these families that have been doing this for generations. We just felt like (the coalition) is something we needed to be part of to support them and be their voice on some of these decisions that are being made that impacts their livelihood.”

Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, plans to be at the meeting. Local elected officials have praised Hanig for initially sounding the alarm on the trawling ban amendment in a social media post.

“What they attempted to do completely backfired on them and it has given the commercial fishermen the platform that they have never had,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “The issue that we’ve had between the recreational fishermen and the commercial fishermen is the commercial fishermen are busy. They’re working all the time. They can’t afford lobbyists so they’ve never been able to tell their story and tell their side of what the real truth is. As bad as what happened several weeks back, what it has done is it exposed the truth. And, what we have to do is keep telling our story so that people understand what the real situation is.”

Hanig hailed the coalition as one that “is going to propel us to where we need to be to fight this battle,” one, he said, will “never be over.”

“When you have leadership in the General Assembly that is willing to shut down an entire industry overnight, there’s a problem and we need to fix that problem. So, here we go,” he said.

HARKERS ISLAND — It takes countless hours of work for the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center to fulfill its mission of preserving Down East Carteret County’s heritage.

Located next to Cape Lookout National Seashore’s visitor center on Shell Point, offering on most days a view of the diamond-patterned lighthouse across the sound, the museum spotlights the history and traditions of the 13 unincorporated communities in the eastern part of the county through exhibits, programs and events.

While Executive Director Karen Willis Amspacher and about a dozen volunteers were busy setting up the morning of July 3 for the annual All-American Shrimp Fry taking place that Saturday, July 5, she told Coastal Review that “It’s the work that makes this place what it is” and the museum “was built on volunteers.”

From converting an old doctor’s office to the gift shop housed in the facility, clearing land and pulling stumps from Willow Pond behind the museum, to creating beautiful quilts and feeding thousands fresh local seafood and sweet puppies, “Core Sound has always been and still is — and hopefully will always be — grounded in the hard work, talents and dedication of the people of our community,” she explained.

So, when Gov. Josh Stein inducted Amspacher and nine others June 25 into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian honor in the state, she didn’t tell a soul.

Amspacher, who has been leading Core Sound since it was established in 1992, had been in Raleigh that last week of June with others fighting against a proposed law that would ban commercial shrimp trawling in the state’s inland waters and within a half-mile of the shore. The House chose not to push the contentious bill through.

She was reluctant to accept the award at the time because, she said, it wasn’t only her who had made the museum a success, and didn’t feel like a time to celebrate. Amspacher decided to meet with the governor anyway because it was a chance to speak to him about the proposed trawling ban.

She wrote in a social media post a week later a “confession of guilt for accepting something good that belongs to everybody that I have mommicked all along the way.”

Amspacher thanked everyone for their congratulations, “but know … WE have accomplished NOTHING alone. Since I moved back home in 1982 it’s been quite a journey, thank you to everyone who is still holding on for our fishing communities no matter what it takes,” she wrote, adding that she hopes her daughter, Katie, remembers when she “puts me in the ground on #redhill under those oaks to post a sign somewhere .. ‘Work is love made visible.’ I believe that … I do love ‘my crowd’ … and love means work.”

Amspacher paused between tasks the morning of July 3 to reiterate that she’s truly grateful for all of the volunteers, especially the young ones “who keep showing up to do the work it takes to keep the museum’s work moving forward.”

Her “shrimp boys” Liam Calabria, Nick Davies and Jackson Saunders, were among those setting up tables and chairs. The three best friends grew up together in Raleigh.

Calabria explained during a break that the nickname came from when he and his older brother, who is in college now, began helping at Core Sound about five years ago.

The first few years, “We had to clean all the shrimp, so that was the main focus, and then we would just help out where need be,” Calabria said. “Now we set up all the tables, chairs, water stations, and we’ve helped serve the food recently, and that’s the fun part because we make​ it a friendly competition.”

His family began in 2020 splitting their time between Carteret County and the state capital, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Core Sound decided to hold the shrimp fry again after pausing during the pandemic, Calabria said that his brother, who was in ninth grade at the time, needed volunteer hours and wanted to help the community.

“I decided to tag along with him,” and his family decided to continue to help. “Now, we started dragging our friends along,” Calabria explained, gesturing to Davies and Saunders.

Davies started helping about three years ago. Currently attending Wake Tech Community College, Davies said it’s “a lot of fun” at Core Sound and he gets to spend time with his best friends.

This is the first year for Saunders, who said he decided to join because he needed some community service hours for scholarships, and “thought it’d be fun to hang out with my friends. So I was just like, why not tag along?”

Calabria added, “We just love the community, and we’ve made a lot of friends and connections through Harkers Island over the five years we’ve lived here, so we just like to see them enjoying the time here and meeting up with some friends.”

Nearby, high school senior Thomas Lathan was helping his grandfather Bill Lathan, a board member for more than 20 years, hang banners that thanked the shrimp fry’s sponsors.

Thomas Lathan has helped at past events, but this is his first summer as an intern. He’s been working with a doctoral student to interview residents about their experiences with tropical storms and how the natural disasters affect and change the culture. He plans to present the findings when he’s done.

Bill Lathan, who still works full time as an attorney in New Bern, said he heads to Harkers Island whenever he’s available and decided to join Thomas that Thursday to help.

Amspacher explained in a later interview that many of the youth that help have been volunteering as shrimp cleaners and trash collectors since they came with their parents and grandparents when they were 9 and 10 years old.

“Now they are high school and college students and they are returning as interns and as the ‘power’ behind our events and projects. They care and each of them know they are part of us and always will be,” she said. “Troop 252 of Davis has been part of our events from the first year we were in this building in 1999. Many of them have children who are now Scouts, doing what they did.”

After the event, Amspacher told Coastal Review that the shrimp fry was a success. This year highlighted the Crystal Coast Water Rescue Team who traveled to Black Mountain during Helene response in fall 2024 and welcomed the Black Mountain Fire Department who called on Carteret County for help.

Core Sound has been reaching out to leaders in the mountains since Hurricane Helene caused untold destruction last fall to the western part of the state to help cope with the destruction and heartache.

Recognizing “our water rescue team traveling to help Black Mountain Fire Department was the same story. The shared experience, the bond that tragedy builds, the ever-knowing that we are all one storm away from needing them to come help us was heavy on everyone there. It was a moment that we will all hold dear,” said Amspacher. “The All-American Shrimp Fry is just that: communities coming together to celebrate our homes, our families and the traditions we hold sacred from across North Carolina.”

Organizers of an afternoon fundraiser set for later this month invite folks to raise a glass to growing seafood and meet area aquaculture specialists to learn more about “a growing opportunity.”

Nacho Brewery in Morehead City is hosting the event set for 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 26, at 2900-6 Arendell St., in the Morehead Plaza shopping center. All proceeds from beer and food sales will go directly to the Carteret Community College Aquaculture Technology Program.

Organizers said the event will support workforce development and promote the future of sustainable seafood in coastal communities.

According to the college’s website, “Aquaculture is defined simply as the farming and husbandry of aquatic organisms. This can be growing seafood or ornamental specimens for commercial sale, environmental enhancement, research, or education.”

The college says its program curriculum is comprehensive, covering hatchery, grow-out, processing and marketing.

“Students learn practical skills that prepare them for future employment in a variety of industries or for continuation at a four-year institution,” according to the college.

The fundraiser will include hands-on experiences with marine life, marine science trivia and delicious craft beer brewed in Carteret County.

It’s also possible to donate online to support the college program, just select “Aquaculture Program” from the options.

A group of state lawmakers vow they will fight for North Carolina shrimpers to continue trawling in inland and nearby offshore waters.

Several legislators on Tuesday spoke out against a last-minute amendment injected into a House bill originally aimed at expanding recreational access to southern flounder and red snapper. They called the revision an “injustice,” “bad,” “wrong,” and one that would shutter the state’s shrimping industry.

“I have spent a lot of the last few days being very angry, and I admit that,” said Rep. Celeste Cairns, R-Carteret, during the Tuesday morning press conference in Raleigh. “It’s better to be angry than to be sad because I will end up in tears. I have been in tears several times during this last week.”

A week has passed since two Senate committees pushed forward amended House Bill 442, one that has since its introduction to the House in March been “hijacked,” according to the bill’s sponsor.

“We’re used to the Senate acting this way, but not to this degree,” Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick, said. “As much as I wanted a flounder season, I urge everyone to vote to oppose this bill every chance they get.”

Sen. David Craven Jr., R-Anson, introduced the amendment, arguing that it would align North Carolina’s trawling laws with those in Virginia and South Carolina and reduce the amount of bycatch, or unwanted species, captured in nets.

Advocacy groups, including the Coastal Conservation Association – North Carolina, and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, have long argued that shrimp trawling harms other fisheries, including juvenile fish, and degrades essential habitats.

But lawmakers, who were joined by commercial shrimpers on Tuesday, pushed back on those claims, saying that the state’s fisheries management plan for shrimp already protects sensitive habitat and juvenile fish. Commercial fishing is heavily regulated in North Carolina, where trawlers are required to have equipment on their boats that prevent and reduce bycatch.

“This is not an environmental issue,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford. “This is an allocation issue. In fact, if we were focused on the environment and the sustainability of fish, we would be talking about water quality. We’d be talking about coastal development. We’d be talking about protecting our wetlands, restoring our buffers,” and about warming sea temperatures.

House Bill 442 was last week sent back to the House, where it and proposed legislation to supplement shrimpers’ income, should the trawling ban become law, now await a vote.

Just hours after the press conference, the Senate voted 43-2 in favor of House Bill 441, which would establish a program that would pay out annual installments over three years to qualifying shrimpers.

The bill includes a provision to temporarily increase license and registration fees for recreational fishers, fishing, and some commercial fishers to cover the cost of the program.

The bill directs the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries to establish and administer the program, one that would allow shrimpers to use trip-ticket forms submitted to the state between Jan. 1, 2023, through June 30, 2025. Each month, dealers submit these forms to the division, which uses the information reported on the tickets as a means to help manage fisheries resources.

Iler also sponsored House Bill 441, which, when introduced earlier this year, called for adopting the loggerhead sea turtle as the state’s official saltwater reptile.

“Without getting into the merits of either bill, I’m here because I am very upset about what happened to these two bills,” Sen. Ted Davis Jr., R-New Hanover, said Tuesday morning.

Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, called the advancement of House Bill 442 a “disgusting process.”

“This amendment wasn’t discussed with our caucus,” he said. “This amendment was a calculated, precision move by a couple of leadership in the North Carolina Senate. When I came to committee prepared to talk about this I was completely shut down. I was completely shut down by my own party and by my own leadership. Last week, I was ashamed to be a member of the North Carolina General Assembly. This is a couple of people in the Senate that are pushing an agenda, an agenda pushed by money, influence, whatever you want to call it. We can’t stand for it and if we in the North Carolina Senate don’t take a stand against this type of activity then we’re not better than they are.”

Last week, an angry Hanig asked fellow senators why they would not wait for the results from an ongoing lawsuit the Coastal Conservation Association – North Carolina filed in 2020 to ban shrimp trawling and for the results of a study on the state’s fisheries that the General Assembly commissioned three years ago.

Hanig said Tuesday that the study was expected to be presented to the legislature in the coming days.

“They know what’s in that study and they know the condition of our fisheries and they know the false narrative they have been pushing for decades,” he said.

Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, also questioned why the call to ban trawling could not have waited until the report is released.

“Did they get a heads up and find out that maybe they’re wrong and that’s why they’re trying to rush it across before the report gets here,” he said. “There’s something dirty going on here people.”

Kidwell said that, in his district, shrimping is not a career, but a way of life.

“Are we going to shut down the people who go to work every day making an honest living because some branch of the government finally decides, in some slimy backroom deal, that they don’t want to do this anymore,” he said. “Well, by God, Down East, we didn’t ask them what they want to do. We want to fish. We want to have the fruits of our labors. We’re not going to stand and take this.”

HATTERAS — Long famous for its bountiful fishing, Hatteras Island now has a new state-of-the-art processing and packing facility that keeps Outer Banks fish local from sea to plate, while also enabling local fresh catch to be shipped directly to customers.

And it’s owned by a local fishing family, to boot.

“The thing was, all this fish used to go to Virginia to get processed,” owner Jeff Aiken said during a recent tour of Jeffrey’s Seafood, situated along Back Creek in Hatteras Village.

The business officially opened May 21 during a ribbon-cutting celebration.

At a time when commercial and charter fishing enterprises face multiple challenges, the new facility is especially good news, Lynne Foster wrote in a message to Coastal Review.

“Jeffrey’s brings vitality to our Working Waterfront,” said Foster who along with her husband Ernie Foster run the Hatteras-based Albatross Fleet. “It also offers hope to the fishing community as well as the island community, which include many supporting businesses that rely on a vibrant fishing fleet and the sale of their catches.”

Working nearby in the chilly, 55-degree fish-cutting room, with heavy metal music seeming to set the pace, Aiken’s son Kelsey, 35, skillfully sliced through fish, one after another, cleaning and filleting. Along with another four or so people, they work their knives swiftly on large tables from early morning hours until about noon.

“As soon as we cut it, it gets bagged, we vacuum seal it and then it’s placed in a box to be shipped,” Kelsey Aiken said. Delivery drivers transport fish to local restaurants and markets from Hatteras to Avon, and sometimes to Rodanthe and Ocracoke. Fish awaiting processing are packed in ice, or stored in large freezers.

In addition to a temperature-controlled fish cleaning and cutting area, and rooms for packing, freezers and storage, the 11,000-square-foot facility also includes Hatteras Seafoods, the new retail market on the ground floor. Additional space remains for a small restaurant that is being planned, with the idea of serving local seafood favorites as well as beer and wine.

Proper cooling is provided by on-site freezers as large as walk-in closets, and the flash freezer — 30 degrees below zero — includes three gigantic fans to keep the air moving. There is also a chute from an ice machine on the upper floor to an “ice room” below.

“This is the brand-new vacuum sealer,” Jeff Aiken said, pointing to a long, steel machine with a pressing device on top. “That’s a $35,000 piece of equipment,” he added, as Kelsey Aiken demonstrated on a rockfish, using a 4-milliliter bag.

Nearby, there is the shrimp grader, another huge machine that not only pinches off the shrimps’ little heads, but also sorts them by four different sizes.

Jeff Aiken said that the business buys most of its shrimp from Native Seafood in Ocracoke, which has a deepwater inlet.

Although the warmer water from climate change has created boom years for shrimpers from Florida to Virginia, Jeff Aiken said, most of the local catch has to be processed in Engelhard and Swan Quarter because of depth limitations for the 60-foot shrimp trawlers. But he said that he hopes they’ll be able to get smaller shrimp boats into Hatteras for processing in the near future.

The retail store displays whole fish on ice in the glass cabinet, as well as filleted fish. A large window offers the customers in the retail store a view into the remarkably shiny and clean cutting room, showing the men, all wearing gloves and waterproof overalls, as they worked.

“I wanted them to see what’s going on,” Jeff Aiken said.

Fish scraps are returned to the water, to be happily “recycled” by other sea creatures, he added.

The facility also has an upstairs area for offices, meetings and storage, with an outside deck that boasts a wide view of the creek, the Pamlico Sound and lovely sunsets. Once the new website is up and running this winter, fresh-frozen filleted fish and shellfish will be able to be ordered online and shipped next-day air directly to consumers.

Jeff Aiken, along with his then-partners, founded the original fish house at the Hatteras docks in the 1980s, soon expanding to a wholesale business that involved driving a refrigerated truck packed with fresh Outer Banks catch to Hampton, Virginia.

Over the years, Jeff Aiken’s business adapted and evolved along with the fishing industry, as numerous local fish retailers and processors downsized or closed entirely.

But it was the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when supply chain disruptions left local chefs without fish to serve, that led to the dramatic expansion of Aiken’s business.

“They said, ‘Hey, you got the fish. Can you cut the fish?’” Jeff Aiken recalled. “So from that point, it spread by word of mouth and they kept coming.”

By then, Kelsey Aiken and his wife, Kelly, had joined Jeff Aiken in the business.

Jeff Aiken said he had purchased the fish house from Lee Peele, who had owned it when it was called Quality Seafood. It is also where he worked for $5 an hour when he first came to the Outer Banks in 1981.

“We were finally out of that little space out of Hatteras Harbor and we were cleaning all the fish for the charter vessels,” he recalled.

Jeff Aiken, who is from Hampton, Virginia, where he still has a home, credits his daughter-in-law Kelly, the company’s retail manager, with securing grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2021 to renovate and enlarge the facility with the goal of improving efficiency and capacity. The business had to pony up about a third of the matching funds.

“We’re in it for a million and they’re in it for two,” Jeff Aiken said. “And they got what they paid for.”

Now local chefs at local restaurants can ask for the fish they want to be filleted to order, Kelly Aiken said. Whenever possible, she said, the fin fish as well as seasonal oysters, shrimp and crab are local catch, and Jeffrey’s continues to partner with Ocracoke and Wanchese fish operations. The business also works with a distributer to bring its fresh fish — frozen and labeled — to North Carolina farmers markets to sell.

But Jeff Aiken said while their business sells almost all North Carolina product, and would never buy foreign shrimp, it’s impossible to guarantee that all their fish is strictly from the Outer Banks since fishers work within the realities of fisheries ecosystems and seasons.

“Fish have fins and tails and they swim,” he said. “They go where ever they want.”

And some fish they sell aren’t local at all, such as salmon from Norway or Scotland.

Jeff Aiken said that they buy most of their shrimp from Native Seafood in Ocracoke, which has a deepwater inlet. Although the warmer water from climate change has created boom years for shrimpers from Florida to Virginia, he continued, most of the local catch has to be processed in Engelhard and Swan Quarter because of water depth limitations for the 60-foot trawlers. But he added that he hopes they’ll be able to get smaller shrimp boats into Hatteras for processing in the near future.

Any customers looking for a brief history of Hatteras fishing can walk to the hallway behind the retail store to view a collection of historic to contemporary photographs of fishermen, including Jeff Aiken, with their boats, their family, their friends and the fish they caught.

“We call it the Hall of Fame,” he said, adding with a laugh: “Or, the Hall of Shame.”

One prominent picture is of the Ada Mae, a skipjack built in 1915 by Ralph Hodges and named after his then 13-year-old sister, who was Jeff Aiken’s grandmother.

The vessel, a former oyster dredge boat that is believed to be the last surviving skipjack in the state, has been restored. Today the boat is moored in New Bern and has participated in the reenactment of Blackbeard’s battle on Ocracoke Island, with Jeff Aiken onboard.

“All of those guys are local fishermen,” Jeff Aiken said, in between telling numerous fish tales about the various scenes lining the walls. “These pictures kind of bring the life to commercial fishing.”

This is not a story about the relief President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are anticipated to give America’s shrimpers.

Yes, shrimpers were cheering Trump’s decision to slap double-digit rates on dozens of countries earlier this week in what they hail as a move that will level prices of domestic shrimp squeezed out of a market flooded by imports.

Shortly after the White House on Wednesday afternoon abruptly paused the tariffs that had gone into effect some 12 hours earlier, and lowering them to 10% on goods for 90 days – minus those from China – the Southern Shrimp Alliance released a statement reiterating its support for tariffs.

“It is encouraging that the Trump Administration’s tariffs have prompted countries to show a new willingness to address trade policies disadvantaging American producers,” Southern Shrimp Alliance Executive Director John Williams stated. “We want to compete in a market where competitors cannot use intolerable practices like forced labor and banned antibiotics to undercut us. For shrimpers, tariffs respond to an urgent need to offset unfair trade.”

And while shrimpers say that will be the case, that’s not where they want their message to end.

Their story goes beyond the call for fair trade. It’s one that entails America’s overseas subsidies of foreign shrimp production and buyer beware warnings that domestic shrimpers say should be, but are not, conveyed to consumers of America’s favorite seafood.

“Ultimately, we’ve gotten sold out by our government because they’ve backed or funded these aquaculture programs in Southeast Asia and South American for more than 30 years,” said Craig Reaves, a member of the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s board of directors and owner of CJ Seafood and Sea Eagle Seafood and Good Eats in Beaufort, South Carolina. “For 40, 50 years, they’ve been developing aquaculture overseas and whether it’s through the World Bank or whether it’s direct grants or subsidies from the United States, we created the monster that is the imported shrimp and imported seafood industry.”

Over the past decade, the U.S. Treasury has supported more than 70 shrimp and aquaculture development projects through international financial institutions, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance. Billions in funding has flowed largely to India and Ecuador, the group said.

As a result, imports have overwhelmed inventories of shrimp in the U.S., driving market prices for domestic-caught shrimp to record lows.

Shrimpers who have survived have done so because they’ve largely turned to local markets to move their product, many selling directly from the dock to customers eager for fresh-caught shrimp.

“Without that we certainly would not be able to shrimp anymore fulltime as a career,” said Monica Smith. “If we did not sell directly to the consumers and build that clientele over the last, you know, 20 years then we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Smith runs Miss Gina’s Seafood in Beaufort, the waters of which her father-in-law, now in his 90s, and husband, Thomas, have shrimped for decades.

There was a time when the father-son pair sold the shrimp they caught to fish houses, a standard practice through the 1980s and 1990s.

But that began to change some time around the mid-2000s, Smith said. That’s when shrimpers saw what she describes as a “drastic increase” in imported shrimp inundate the market, driving down the price for domestic shrimp and crowding out space at processing facilities.

In 2021, roughly 2 billion pounds of imported shrimp products valuing $8 billion flowed into the United States, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance.

An estimated 94% of the volume of shrimp consumed in America comes from foreign nations, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission, or USITC.

Southern Shrimp Alliance says that more than 90% of that came in last year from India, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Vietnam, all of which impose tariff and tax rates of between 13% and 45% on shrimp caught and farmed in the U.S.

In October 2023, the American Shrimp Processors Association, or ASPA, filed anti-dumping petitions on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador and Indonesia. Dumping is the import of goods below normal value.

The group also filed countervailing duty petitions, or import taxes created to offset an exporting country’s subsidies, on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

A year later, in November 2024, the USITC affirmed that the U.S. shrimp industry was materially injured from frozen warmwater shrimp imports from Indonesia and that the Department of Commerce determined shrimp from Ecuador, India and Vietnam were being sold at less than fair value.

The Commerce Department issued countervailing duty orders on frozen warmwater shrimp imports from those three countries and an antidumping duty order on imports from Indonesia.

Last month, congressional representatives, including North Carolina Republican Rep. Greg Murphy, reintroduced bipartisan legislation that would halt federal funds from going to international financial institutions to finance foreign shrimp farms.

A house bill known as the Save Our Shrimpers Act, was referred March 11 to the House Committee on Financial Services.

During the past decade, the U.S. Treasury has agreed to support more than 70 shrimp and aquaculture development projects through international financial institutions, according to Southern Shrimp Alliance.

“And those imports come in here, they sell them at a lower price because they’re using cheap labor, forced labor, sometimes child labor, and they’re full of antibiotics,” said Nancy Edens, president of B.F. Millis & Sons Seafood in Sneads Ferry. “There is a big difference in what we catch here in the ocean, Pamlico Sound, New River, than what you would get in a restaurant that serves imported shrimp.”

The Department of Labor added the largest supplier of shrimp to the United States, India, to its 2024 List of Goods Produced with Child and Forced Labor.

The Ocean Outlaw Project, as well as an Associated Press investigative report, highlighted those labor practices. The Ocean Outlaw Project also found that shrimp directed to the U.S. market were contaminated with antibiotics the American government has banned for use in shrimp.

“I think we’re going to always have imported seafood so I would like to see our government stop subsidizing these other countries and let them stand, rise, or fall on their own merit,” Reaves said. “We just want a fair shot. Tariffs, to me, it’s an immediate help, but it’s not a long-term fix because you can negotiate. I think you have to seize the moment while everybody’s talking about the things that’s even more important, which is raising awareness of how bad the imported seafood is and how the government knows that it’s bad.”

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Morty Gaskill is a member of the North Carolina Coastal Federation Board of Directors. The nonprofit advocacy organization publishes Coastal Review, which remains editorially independent.

In 1976, a North Carolina Sea Grant newsletter sounded the alarm: large-scale land drainage was wiping out wetlands that protect our coastal fisheries. Fishermen saw their livelihoods at risk and 3,000 of them pleaded for action.

“We, the undersigned, being commercial and sport fishermen who use the creeks, rivers, and bays adjacent to Pamlico Sound and the waters of Pamlico Sound, petition the Marine Fisheries Commission and state officials as follows: … to investigate the effect of changing salinity in said waters upon the economy of Pamlico Drainage areas and to initiate proper controls to insure the continued health of commercial and sport fishing in this area.”

They saw it coming. But there was hope — state and federal leaders acted. For decades, farming, forestry, development, and fisheries co-existed under federal and state wetland safeguards — rules that carefully balanced economic growth and environmental protection. These safeguards didn’t create unbearable hardships; they provided stability for all.

Yet here we are again, nearly 50 years later, facing the same crisis — not just for our fisheries, but for our homes, businesses, and communities. Given the changing economic and environmental conditions of many coastal communities across North Carolina, it could not come at a worse time.

This time, the rollback of wetland protections isn’t coming from local drainage operations. It’s happening due to recent federal and state government actions. The Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision has dramatically narrowed the definition of federally protected wetlands. The North Carolina General Assembly followed suit, choosing to adopt the weaker federal standard instead of maintaining the stronger state level protections that had been in place for years. And now, under new leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is further diluting the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, stripping even more protections from wetlands and streams that feed our coastal estuaries.

The consequences? More wetlands drained. More freshwater rushing unchecked into saltwater nurseries. More flooding. More property damage.

Costly gamble

History has already shown us what happens when we fail to protect our wetlands. In 1976, Rose Bay fisherman Troy W. Mayo spoke out as catches dwindled.

“Twenty-five years ago, I owned a 26-foot shad boat. We used to go out in Rose Bay, two people, for five or six hours and we’d catch 35 to 40 tubs of oysters—that was two men pulling by hand,” said Mayo. “Today you go out in this same area with a power winder and all modern equipment, and I’d be surprised if you catch 10 tubs of oysters.”

Scientists confirmed what fishermen already knew. “Salinity is a major ingredient for survival in the estuaries”; reported the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. Preston Pate, who studied juvenile shrimp in Rose Bay, found that freshwater intrusion “definitely disrupted the salinity of small creeks in the area. The result was a smaller shrimp harvest by fishermen.”

But wetland loss isn’t just bad for fisheries. Wetlands absorb floodwaters, buffer storm surges, and keep pollution out of our waterways. Every acre lost means more homes and businesses at risk.

In North Carolina, our coastal communities have already been battered by hurricanes, rising insurance costs, rising property taxes, lack of affordable housing, and an aging drainage infrastructure that can’t keep up with heavier rains. Weakening wetland protections only adds fuel to the fire. It shifts costs onto property owners, local governments, and taxpayers — many of whom will be left paying for flood damage that could have been prevented.

Commonsense approach to conservation

Those lessons from the 1970s helped shape policies that kept North Carolina’s wetlands intact for decades. But now, history is repeating itself. The rollback of WOTUS protections and the state’s decision to weaken its own rules mean more wetlands will be drained, increasing flooding, pollution, and economic losses.

This shouldn’t be a divisive political issue. Wetland protections aren’t just about environmental policy — they’re about practical economics, public safety, and community well-being. They help prevent costly flood damage, safeguard private property, and support the resilience of coastal economies that depend on fisheries, tourism, and clean water.

Jim Brown of the Division of Marine Fisheries put it best nearly 50 years ago:

“We love beans and beef, and we have a serious need to extend agricultural operations. At the same time, we dearly love shrimp and oysters. There exists a very serious need for imposing compatibility between the two. Can it be done? That’s the question. Or do we just keep plodding along with our fingers crossed?”

If we ignore history, we aren’t just crossing our fingers — we are guaranteeing a grim future for our coastal communities. The fishermen of Rose Bay warned us decades ago. Will we listen this time? Or will we, once again, pay the price for failing to protect the wetlands that sustain our way of life?

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns.

The state Division of Marine Fisheries will accept public comments throughout April on a proposal to allow recreational fishers more access to the southern flounder fishery.

The 30-day comment period kicks off Tuesday on the division’s draft Southern flounder Fishery Management Plan Amendment 4, which would expedite an allocation shift to 50% commercial and 50% recreational this year.

The draft amendment would allow for more recreational access to the fishery and simultaneously maintain the rebuilding requirements of Amendment 3 of the plan, officials said. That plan, adopted in 2022, calls for a 50/50 balance to go into effect in 2026.

But after two years where the recreational flounder seasons were shortened and one year where there was no recreational flounder season, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission charged the division with finding ways to allow recreational fishers more access while maintaining stock rebuilding requirements in Amendment 3.

Advisory committees to the commission have scheduled meetings in April to accept in-person comments.

The Southern Regional Advisory Committee is set to meet April 8 at the division’s Central District Office, 5285 Highway 70 West, Morehead City.

The Northern Regional Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet April 10 at the College of the Albemarle, Dare Campus – Room 110, 205 U.S. 64, Manteo.

The Finfish Advisory Committee will meet April 16 also at the division’s Morehead City office.

All meetings begin at 6 p.m.

Written comments will be accepted via an online form and by mail to Southern Flounder FMP Amendment 4 Comments, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, N.C. 28557.

Comments will be accepted through April 30.

The nonprofit organization that promotes North Carolina seafood is hosting a daylong summit in March to offer consumers an insight into the industry.

“NC Catch Summit 2025: A Day of Seafood Celebration with Carteret Catch!” is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 10 at Carteret Community College in Morehead City.

The summit is being offered at no charge. Register online to attend. The continental breakfast and box lunch are being offered at $20 plus fees. Attendees can add the feature during registration.

The summit “is open to the public and geared toward the seafood industry as a whole, including consumers and folks who just want to learn more about the mission of the Catch movement,” Carteret Catch President Pam Davis Morris told Coastal Review.

The agenda includes discussions on North Carolina fisheries, the value of community-based seafood businesses, seafood trends, marketing strategies, the new commercial fishing academy at Carteret Community College and consumer education.

Carteret Catch was established in 2005 with the goal “to once again make fishing a viable lifestyle and preserve a culture that characterizes the central coastal region of North Carolina.”

NC Catch formed in 2011 in partnership with Catch groups representing Brunswick County, Carteret County, Ocracoke and Outer Banks Catch.

“Fresh seafood is a cornerstone of North Carolina’s economy and culture. Our commercial fishing communities not only embody the rich history that has made the state a beloved destination but provide safe, healthy and sustainable seafood consumers need and deserve to live their best lives,” organizers said. “NC Catch Summit 2025 will empower you to make informed choices and advocate for a thriving seafood industry.”

On the afternoon of March 9, NC Catch is kicking off the summit with the unveiling of a special project recognizing African Americans in the seafood industry.

Related: African Americans in seafood industry heart of new exhibit

Starting at 4 p.m. at Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island, the program will feature a cooking and tasting demonstration with area chefs, a panel discussion and exhibit opening. Register online for the exhibit opening.

Capt. John Mallette grew up fishing, but didn’t come from a fishing family.

Born and reared around Sneads Ferry and the Topsail area, he said his mother worked in real estate in Wilmington and his father was one of Ocean City’s original developers and bought a home there in 1950.

Ocean City was established on Topsail Island in 1949 and was “the first place where Black people could have oceanfront property” in the state, Mallette recently told Coastal Review.

The motel had a pier, and “I pretty much lived on the pier fishing as a little kid,” he continued.

“There was a lady who had One Stop Bait & Tackle in Surf City — Betty Warren, she’s long passed away now — but she would babysit me, basically, and I would sit there and help sell seafood and head shrimp and filet flounder. And then her husband, Preston, would take me out shrimping in the waterway with him, and that’s how I got started commercial fishing and just never stopped. I just grew into it, and started running boats.”

From there, he became a captain and spent several years piloting various commercial, private and charter vessels in Central and South America, Australia and Hawaii. While a fishing guide on a private island near Turks and Caicos, he learned his mother was ill and returned to the U.S. in 2008 to take care of her.

These days he co-owns Southern Breeze Seafood Co. on U.S. Highway 258 between Richlands and Jacksonville. He delivers fresh seafood all over the state, including to a handful of universities such as Elon and North Carolina Central.

“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday I’m on the road for the most part,” he said.

Stories like his are the backbone of an ongoing NC Catch Initiative to highlight African American contributions to the North Carolina Seafood Industry. Established in 2011, NC Catch is a nonprofit organization that aims to educate consumers about the state’s seafood industry.

Mallette and NC Catch President Barbara Garrity-Blake, a cultural anthropologist who teaches fisheries policy at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, are heading up the project, “Recognizing African American Participation in the North Carolina Seafood Industry.”

The project is the center of a new traveling exhibit, “African Americans in North Carolina Seafood,” that will debut March 9 at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

Garrity-Blake told Coastal Review that NC Catch wanted to highlight the diversity of people and roles within the seafood supply chain.

“The seafood industry is made up of men and women of various races and ethnicities who harvest, process, transport, buy, sell, and cook North Carolina seafood. We are focusing on Black contributions because African Americans have a history and legacy in North Carolina fisheries since Colonial days, from herring to menhaden, blue crab, mullet, shrimp — all of it,” she said.

For the project, people from the Black seafood business community and researchers worked together to compile narratives, video and oral histories of Black fishers, wholesalers, chefs and others working in seafood to increase recognition of African American participation in the state’s seafood industry. These currently are being housed on the NC Catch website.

Garrity-Blake said that Mallette is a “perfect co-principal investigator because he delivers seafood all over North Carolina and knows so many people in the industry. Right away he had a list of Black practitioners for us to interview,” and the “stories we are documenting are so compelling.”

Among those who shared their story for the project is Tyrone Hightower of Apex Seafood. Also on the NC Catch board, he quit a career in veterinary science to sell seafood at triangle-area farmers markets because he loves interacting with people, Garrity-Blake explained.

“He had a tough time breaking in at first, but Brett Blackburn, a major seafood distributor out of Carolina Beach, helped him out and taught him ‘fishermen’s language,’ like what shrimp counts mean,” she said.

Another is a young shrimper named Nate Ellison, who lives in the unincorporated Carteret County community of Merrimon. He “talked about his determination to maintain working waterfront access at the end of Silver Dollar Road, which was infamously sold out from under his family,” Garrity-Blake continued.

A husband-and-wife team who fish out of Hertford, Herman and Quinetta “Mermaid Q” Manley of Crackn Crab Seafood are featured as well. They “had their crab pots cut, their boat sunk, and their business shunned. But they stuck to their guns and eventually earned the respect of the community. Today they crab, fish, and sell seafood in low-income neighborhoods to help combat food insecurity,” she said.

Project’s early days

Garrity-Blake and Mallette connected during the 2021 North Carolina Seafood Festival, held annually the first weekend of October in downtown Morehead City.

Mallette said he was there to give a cooking demonstration for Got to Be NC, a marketing campaign for North Carolina products under the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and they “just started a conversation.”

Garrity-Blake told Coastal Review that during this conversation, Mallette shared his experiences as a commercial fisherman out of Sneads Ferry, which she said she found interesting.

“Since the last menhaden fish factory in North Carolina closed in 2005, you don’t meet a lot of African American fishermen. Long story short, Capt. John joined the NC Catch board, and we applied for a NC Sea Grant’s Community Collaborative Research Grant — pairing researchers and practitioners — to do this project,” she said.

Mallette also recognized that “African American commercial fishermen are few and far between. And it’s always been that way. The question is, why?”

When he was the captain of larger vessels while traveling around the globe, he said only a few of the American captains were Black. “It was me and maybe two other guys. Literally the only ones.”

So, they started exploring and researching, looking into stereotypes like “Black people can’t swim” and “little things that people would actually take to heart, “Mallette said.

While talking with the old fishermen and fish house owners he grew up around, “It was never, ‘we didn’t have Black shrimp boat captains or Black guys running the boats, because they were Black.’ They tried to give them the jobs, but they wouldn’t do it because a lot of their grandmothers and moms would be like, ‘That water ain’t for us. You stay on the dock,’” Mallette recounted.

They’d pack fish or head shrimp but wouldn’t actually go out on the boats, “and it wasn’t that they didn’t have the opportunities given to them, a lot of it was they were just always told that that wasn’t for them.”

Mallette said he never understood that either, especially once he began traveling.

The best fishermen were Black when he was in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and West Africa. “All through the Caribbean, your commercial fishermen are Black,” he said, but not in the United States. “It’s the one place you just don’t see it.”

About the exhibit

During the exhibit opening that begins at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 9, visitors will have an opportunity to listen to a panel discussion, and a cooking demonstration with Chef Ricky Moore of Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham, Chef Jamie Davis of The Hackney in Washington, and Chef Keith Rhodes of Catch in Wilmington.

The public is welcome at no charge and are asked to register online ahead of the event.

“NC Catch’s mission is to raise awareness about the superior quality of North Carolina seafood and the importance of supporting the people, families, and communities who provide consumer access to it,” Garrity-Blake said. “Through the lens of North Carolina’s African American seafood legacy, we are ‘taking it to the people’ so they can enjoy the exhibit, hear firsthand stories about Black experiences in seafood, and taste what it’s all about.”

Core Sound’s Exhibit Curator Pam Davis Morris told Coastal Review that the museum is proud to host the opening exhibition and is glad to have provided a supporting role in its development.

“This exhibition dovetails in well with and builds upon previous work produced by the Core Sound Museum such as the popular Menhaden Fishery exhibition, The Local Fisheries Knowledge Project, Community Exhibit displays and many other oral history and artifact-driven projects,” Morris said. “Built as a traveling exhibition, this display will not only be shown at the Core Sound Museum but will travel to other sites as well.”

The exhibit is a kick-off for the NC Catch Summit taking place March 10 at Carteret Community College in Morehead City. Also a no-charge event, the daylong program will look at the state’s fisheries and seafood industry. Register online to attend.

NC Catch held a preview of the exhibit at the University of North Carolina Wilmington Tuesday, followed by a “Chef’s Takeover” cooking demonstration with Davis, Rhodes, and Mallette. 

Garrity-Blake said Wednesday after the event that it “went great.” The program was well attended, there was good discussion and the “food was fantastic.” Mallette prepared shrimp and crabmeat etouffee, Rhodes made a “Soul Bowl” with salmon, black-eyed peas and plantains, and Davis prepared fried catfish with ham hock gravy.

Featured Image

An immature white ibis nearly blends into its surroundings as it forages just off a Bodie Island trail that ends at a series of creeks southwest of the lighthouse. Photo: Kip Tabb

Featured Image

Snow covers Front Street in Beaufort Wednesday morning as the winter storm continues to blanket Carteret County and much of coastal North Carolina. Photo: Dylan Ray

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Kevin Hardy of Wilmar, near Vanceboro, fishes along Cape Lookout National Seashore as a commercial fishing trawler offshore heads southwest. Photo: Dylan Ray

If you love the sweet taste of a fresh North Carolina bay scallop you may want to stop reading this now … but please continue — it’s not all bad news.

Although the likely invasive species of parasite that a team of University of North Carolina Wilmington researchers have identified in bay scallops here in the state is gross, these scallops are not harmful when consumed.

That’s good news for the bay scallop lover, but it’s bad news for a shellfish that has never fully recovered from a red tide event in the late 1980s, struggles to thrive in polluted waters and dwindling habitat and gets picked off by predators.

“I view this parasite as just one more hit to the scallops,” said Dr. Julia Buck, an assistant professor in UNCW’s Department of Biology and Marine Biology.

After Buck was hired on at the university in 2019, a colleague asked her a question that would set the course for an investigation to determine what type of parasite was infecting some of the bay scallops in North Carolina, where it came from, how prevalent it is in the state’s waters where bay scallops grow, and how it affects scallops.

Dr. Ami Wilbur, director of UNCW’s Shellfish Research Hatchery, first noted the parasite, a squirmy ring of white, tiny, finger-like projections around the flesh of a scallop she was examining in 2012.

It would be several years before she would get the opportunity to meet Buck and ask the most basic of biological questions: What is it?

Buck promptly determined the parasite was a trematode. Trematodes are a diverse group of organisms in which thousands of species have been known to science for a long time.

But this particular species of trematode was a mystery.

The literature Buck and Wilbur dove into provided no clues. The pair fanned out pictures of infected scallops to fellow scientists up the East Coast (bay scallops are not commonly found from South Carolina south to Florida’s Atlantic Coast) and across the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists responded with two very different answers. Those in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Virginia had not seen the parasite.

A scientist on Florida’s Gulf coast had and, after researchers did some genetic sampling, they determine the parasites found off Florida’s west coast were the same as those found in North Carolina.

“The bay scallop is an iconic species that people care a lot about,” Buck said. “And yet, even though this parasite is very visible to the naked eye – when you open the scallop you see that it is infected – no one had described the parasite. There was no record of it in the literature whatsoever. That’s really weird. We would have seen it 100 years ago and there would have been a record of it in the literature. The fact that it’s not there tells us that it’s likely an invasive species.”

The team at UNCW conducted DNA sequencing, a laboratory process that allows scientists to learn the exact order of the four building blocks that make up DNA, and compared it to DNA in a database of genetic sequences known as GenBank.

They found the parasite’s closest known relative, a genus that was only recently described, in Australia.

Researchers can’t say with absolute certainly that this species of trematode came from Australia to the U.S.

Buck can only theorize that the parasite infected plankton that hitched a ride on a container ship.

What the team does know is that trematodes have a complex life cycle. They need to infect multiple hosts in order to make it to adulthood.

“We don’t actually know the specific identify of any of those hosts except for the bay scallop at the moment,” Buck said.

What they suspect is that this species of trematode initially latches onto a scallop before it goes on to a small crustacean, like a copepod, a tiny crustacean that is a key component in the marine food chain.

The theory is that infected copepods get eaten by smaller fish and smaller fish get eaten by larger fish. The adult worm develops in the larger fish, where the worm releases eggs, which then infect more bay scallops.

The team research, supported by North Carolina Sea Grant, found that the parasite is now found in most waterways where bay scallops live.

Fellow researcher and former UNCW graduate student Hailea Boggess, who earned her master’s last December, looked at wild scallops in places including Chadwick Bay and Core Sound.

“We basically covered the area in North Carolina where scallops exist because we wanted to know what the prevalence was throughout North Carolina,” Buck said.

Roughly speaking, Boggess found around 20% of the wild scallops she collected to be infected by the parasite.

Researchers found that infections are seasonal and that parasites are likely dropped off by larger host fish, perhaps tarpons, that migrate to North Carolina in the summer then head south back to Florida when the water turns cool.

“We see new infections happening over the wintertime,” Buck said. “This is just every single year we look this is exactly the same pattern we find.”

Ongoing research suggests that the parasite does not try to kill its initial host, but that it does try to steal as much energy as it can to put into its own reproduction.

Trematodes castrate their initial host, which means the parasite strips the scallops they infect of the ability to reproduce.

Buck said the team has also found that the parasites affect the growth of the scallops they infect, perhaps because the parasite lives in a scallop’s gills, making it hard for the scallop, a filter feeder, to eat.

Additional research, including physiological effects the parasite has on scallops, is expected to be published later.

Coastal Review reached out to Adam Tyler, owner and operator of Core Sound Oyster Co. in Smyrna, who recalled the days of his youth when the sound teemed with scallops, a shellfish he calls “sweet as candy.”

“At wintertime at low tide you would go down to the grass flats with a five-gallon bucket and fill it,” with scallops, he said.

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries lists the status of the bay scallop fishery as “depleted,” with harvests in recent years decreasing to practically no landings.

“Used to (scalloping) was something you could bank on,” Tyler said. “If oystering was poor, you’d go scalloping. You could always go scalloping, go oystering in the wintertime if there were no fish and now, unfortunately with the decline of the scallops and the regulations, everybody is being forced commercially into the same fisheries, which is further straining resources, which leads to more regulation and more consolidation.”

He’s watched large schools of rays come through and decimate juvenile scallop beds. He “always swore” predation and water quality have been largely to blame for the population decline.

The discovery of the parasite, “was completely new to me,” he said.

If he’s come across infected scallops, he doesn’t know it. Tyler said he can shuck one scallop in about 25-30 seconds.

“When you’re cutting them that fast you really don’t look at it closely like that,” he said. “You just spent all day catching them and now you’ve got to spend half the night opening them.”

Shucking involves removing the gills, which means parasites are likely pulled and tossed aside.

Any remaining parasite is killed off if when the scallop is cooked or frozen, Buck said.

“There are some shellfish-borne diseases, but by-and-large most marine parasites aren’t compatible in humans,” said Jeff Dobbs, a marine biologist with the Division of Marine Fisheries. “I definitely don’t want to be an alarmist about this parasite in particular. In fact, we have seen some promising upticks in Core Sound and Back Sound and Pamlico Sound.”

He encourages anyone with questions or concerns to contact the division’s Shellfish Sanitation and Recreational Water Quality section.

He also asked that anyone who sees shellfish die-offs contact the division.

All the tears shed when El’s Drive-In closed for summer could cut a new inlet through Carteret County.

The owners promised that the beloved Morehead City landmark would return this fall after renovations. They also opened an outpost in up the coast in Smyrna. Nonetheless, a hole remains in the hearts of locals who still remember when El Franks opened this go-to for the famous N.C. shrimp burger in 1959.

El’s is one of those local-favorite seafood restaurants along North Carolina’s coast that don’t just serve tasty food. They bring a sense of joy and connection that keep regulars coming back.

Staff are just so nice, and you’re bound to see someone you know. Even if you don’t, folks at the next table or in line behind you will strike up a conversation. Before long, the owner might join in, sharing family stories, cherished recipes passed down through generations and the names of commercial fishers who harvested the fresh catch.

Of course, fried seafood aromas drift from kitchens into homespun dining rooms, more reasons why locals return again and again.

O’Neal’s Sea Harvest

618 Harbor Road, Wanchese 

The L-shaped counter hosts a cashier taking lunch orders on one end and a second ringing up fresh seafood at the other. Fish and shellfish glisten on ice in between while crews cut seafood behind them. Customers filling the zero-frills dining room savor fried black drum, sheepshead, golden tile, whatever’s biting. Daily specials might list scallop po’boys, grilled mahi tacos or blackened shrimp and asiago cheese stuffed inside baked potatoes. If you decline a side dish, expect the cook to change your mind at the pickup window: “Are you sure I can’t make you something?”

Basnight’s Lone Cedar Café

7623 S. Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head

The all-hands-on-deck Basnight family, including commercial crabber Vicki Basnight, opened the restaurant in 1996 to uplift the region’s seafood industry during a challenging period of high fuel prices and increased imports undercutting the domestic seafood supply. The local catch remains central in dishes like Wanchese clam chowder and seasonal lump crab cakes, as well as on an “Outer Banks Traditions” menu, keeping year-rounders loyal, even during the busy tourist season.

Bay Brothers Seafood

100 Jean St., Plymouth

You could mistake Bay Brothers’ simple, red brick building for an industrial plant instead of seafood central. Locals come for live hard and soft N.C. blue crabs (a soft-shell crab shedding operation occupies the back), lump crab meat and various fish and shellfish. Tables in the middle of the immaculate market are where neighbors tuck into uncomplicated seafood specials like she-crab soup, tuna salad and broiled, Old Bay garlic butter shrimp.

White Point Take-Out

101 Core Sound Loop Road Ext., Atlantic

This itty-bitty gray cottage tucked within a residential neighborhood has a single take-out window serving fried-to-order seafood like shrimp burgers and soft-shell crab sandwiches, with a side of crinkle-cut fries. Eat on picnic tables under twisty, old live oak trees. Hours vary but the owner reports that for summer 2024, the window opens at 11 a.m. and closes by 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and by 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Wild Will’s Revenge

1015 Morris Marina Road, Atlantic

The hashtag #coresounders and family commercial fishing photos on Wild Will’s Instagram tell you it’s worth the drive to far-flung Atlantic. Grandchildren of esteemed community and fishing industry leader, the late Billy Smith, have Down East roots dating to the 1700s. They named the restaurant for their late father, William Ellis Smith, who ran the original Wild Will’s 20 years ago in nearby Harkers Island. The kitchen serves whatever’s fresh, like jumbo-lump, blue crab cakes. Specials might spotlight heritage recipes such as corned spots in fall and fluffy Down East light rolls. Hours are limited, usually Friday and Saturday starting at 5 p.m.

The Spot Grill

202 Wellons Drive, Beaufort

You’ll leave the pine-paneled dining room wearing the delicious perfume of fried mahi, soft-shell crab, flounder or whatever’s fresh (sometimes conch stew) even if you don’t sit at the counter that’s practically inside the wide-open, galley kitchen. The lingering aroma is a pleasant memory of seafood cooked to order with a side of eavesdrop-worthy conversations about everything relevant in the community. Lunch only and cash only, but there’s an ATM inside.

Blackbeard’s Grill

1644 Live Oak St., Beaufort

The Rose family of commercial fishers operates Blackbeard’s next door to its seafood market. Cross your fingers that the specials menu features North River clams, harvested nearby and smothered in garlic butter, white wine and parmesan. Pray, too, for the Local’s Supper of fresh shrimp and speckled trout with crispy okra and sweet potato casserole and a plate of Harkers Island soft-shell crabs fried according to Aunt Dora’s recipe.

Jordan’s Smokehouse & Seafood

129 Phillips Loop Road, Swansboro

You know the fried sea mullet is fresh when you ask if it’s local and the server replies, “I caught it myself last night.” Arrive early to sit among regulars who don’t mind traveling from the other side of Onslow County for the old-timey oyster bar vibe. Forget being shy. Everyone talks to everyone like they’ve known each other all their lives. In many cases, they have.

Riverview Café

119 Hall Point Road, Sneads Ferry

Sneads Ferry is no longer a tiny fishing village, but it still feels that way at this waterfront restaurant owned by the same family since 1946. Riverview started as an oyster bar behind a store with a single gas pump. All that’s changed but the fresh seafood hasn’t, including shrimp harvested on the family trawler. The whiteboard lists so many specials you have to walk up to read it. Fantail shrimp, bang bang shrimp, peel-and-eats, whole flounder, deviled crab, steamed clams and homemade pie baked from treasured family recipes.

Seaview Crab Co. Kitchen

1515 Marstellar St, Wilmington

Lunchtime is crush time, but moms from the neighborhood, workers in uniform and the guy who just needs a break from his honey-do list wait patiently for orders. They’re quick to share picnic table seats mere steps away from iced-down seafood. Steamed blue crabs and overstuffed fried fish sandwiches are legendary. No matter what you select, expect fellow diners to swoon over your plate. “I almost got that,” they’ll lament. Fortunately, there’s always next time to try and decide between specials like fresh-shucked clam chowder and seared tuna bao buns with gochujang mayo.

WASHINGTON WATERFRONT– A nonprofit environmental education center perched on the Pamlico River is set to undergo a major transformation.

A Partnership for the Sounds facility that focuses on estuaries and coastal rivers, plans are in motion to expand the North Carolina Estuarium’s reach through a new Seafood School.

“The Seafood School is designed to educate and entertain visitors of all ages. There is a deep heritage in eastern North Carolina of both enjoying and providing seafood, and we will work with everyone who wants to share in that,” Estuarium Director Tom Stroud explained to Coastal Review.

The Seafood School is to feature new exhibits highlighting the estuary’s role as a nursery for marine life and will have an educational kitchen where programs for the public on cooking and preparation of key species can take place.

“Our goal is to use seafood — or ‘soundfood’ — to create a full circle of appreciation for healthy estuaries,” Stroud said in a release. “For many people the closest connection they have with estuaries is eating things that come from them – oysters, blue crabs, shrimp, fish. That’s great, but there is a through-line between enjoying a fried oyster and the condition of the ecosystem it came from. The Seafood School will link the health of the estuary, the effort it takes for harvest, and the process of creating a great seafood meal in a single space.”

Currently, the 12,500 square-foot center features more than 200 exhibits that describe estuaries and coastal rivers, including aquariums with crabs and other estuarine life, art, interactive displays, artifacts from life on the Pamlico River, explorations of hurricanes and sea level rise, Pamlico River boat tours, and special programs on natural and cultural heritage, according to its website.

Stroud said in an interview that the renovation is “significant” and “will fully transform our existing classroom space, update current exhibitry, and provide incredible access to the Pamlico River as well.”

Preliminary work on the buildout will begin by June, and the Seafood School is expected to be in operation by early 2025.

The space where the Seafood School will be located is not in the main part of the exhibit hall, “so we’re hoping the renovations will have a minimal impact on our regular operation,” Stroud said, adding he believes programming will increase.

The Seafood School was inspired by the state’s efforts to restore oyster habitats because of the ecosystem benefits and the economic boost to coastal communities, and folds in other key fisheries to expand the view of why estuaries need to be sustained and protected, the announcement states.

The Estuarium evolved from the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine Study in the early 1990s, and since then, the goal has been to promote awareness and stewardship of the Albemarle-Pamlico, and that won’t change, Stroud said in the announcement. “But it’s time to engage new generations in new ways. We feel like the Seafood School is an approach that will elevate our message and make us uniquely identifiable among science education facilities.” 

Stroud expounded in the interview that the Seafood School will have two main learning attractions: the educational exhibits and a Cooking Classroom.

The classroom, or kitchen, will be the most noticeable new piece, Stroud said, and will allow for all types of cooking programs including steaming, baking, frying for groups of up to 16 people. The space also is going to be available as a rental venue for groups of 20 to 30 people “who want to socialize in a beautiful spot right on the Pamlico River,” he said.

“We envision having noted local chefs — and hopefully some from farther away — lead programs on how to prepare all types of seafood caught in North Carolina’s estuaries,” Stroud said.

Next to the kitchen will be exhibits that highlight the water quality needs of these species, and look at how different seafoods are harvested in state waters, especially from sustainable methods.

“The exhibit piece will look like a classic waterfront seafood shop along an estuarine shoreline in eastern N.C.,” Stroud said.

A planning grant from Nutrien, the Canadian fertilizer company in Saskatchewan, helped fund the Seafood School’s planning.

“We approached Nutrien with the basic concept in fall of 2022,” Stroud said. The funding allowed the creative consultant, Harbor Peoples, to work for about six months with chefs, watermen, building inspectors, exhibit designers, kitchen suppliers and an architect on design concepts and flesh out a definitive plan before going for bigger funding.

“We started with the idea that the exhibit and kitchen would focus specifically on oysters, but as we met with people and thought it through, we felt the story would be stronger if we expanded to include other key species from the estuary to tell a broader story of the ecosystem, which is indeed the mission of the Estuarium,” Stroud said.

The Estuarium was awarded a $250,000 grant in this year’s budget that will cover about half of the estimated cost.

In the release, Stroud expressed the center’s gratitude to Nutrien for their support on the planning grant and to Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, and also representing Dare, Hyde and Pamlico counties, for help with the state grant, “but we’ll need additional funding to fully achieve our goals. We look forward to sharing our vision with donors so they can have an opportunity to be part of the Estuarium’s programming evolution and show their support for keeping the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary healthy.”

Kidwell, of Chocowinity, told Coastal Review on Wednesday that he supports the Seafood School because the fishing industry is a large driver of the economy in Eastern North Carolina.

“For many years, the fishing industry has been in decline. The Seafood School will help to shine a spotlight on the importance of fishing and seafood and relates directly to North Carolina’s efforts to expand oyster fishing and fishing in general. When correctly managed, seafood is an excellent source of sustainable protein,” Kidwell said in an email. “The coastal waters in NC are a natural resource that provides some of the world’s best oysters and fin fish. Let’s do our best to manage and support the fishing industry.”

The plan is to initiate a major fundraising campaign soon, “but anyone interested in supporting us now can contact me at tmstroud@embarqmail.com and I can provide information,” Stroud said.

Traffic rounds the Wilmington Interstate 40 Bypass like a NASCAR final lap but not fast enough to outrun the fish stock start time. I ignore my constantly dinging phone. For sure, it’s Trey Herring texting as I rally toward the backyard where a 10-gallon soup pot waits on me.

As I peak 85 mph, my phone rings, and I pull over. “How long? Are you close? We need to get moving.” Trey speaks hyper-impatiently, like someone is tapping a Timex over his shoulder.

That someone is Herring’s close friend, Capt. Steve Jolley, a seasoned angler and cook from Washington, N.C., who Herring told me weeks before is “true to the ways.”

“When I cook with him, I feel like I’m cooking with my grandparents,” Herring had said.

Today, the men are preparing a sacred Eastern North Carolina dish: fish stew, better known to the unenlightened as “that soup with the eggs on top.” Fresh fish mingles with a holy trinity of potatoes, onions and bacon. Tomatoes plus each cook’s secret spice blend, often just salt and black pepper, season the basics. During the final minutes of cooking, eggs are cracked over the steaming stew.

For an outsider like me, being invited to “a fish stew,” which describes both dish and event, is a sign of acceptance in communities that keep the ritual. Showing up late is akin to stumbling into church halfway through the sermon. So, I arrive ashamed to see Jolley has already lowered the frame of a mighty red drum into the pot.

Fish stew requires a precise, step-by-step process stalled for no one.

I take my licking in the form of a Capt. Jolley silent treatment. Herring, a Goldsboro native blessed with a grandma who made him fish stew on demand, tempers my guilt.

“The stock is the most important part,” he explains. “It has to simmer for the right amount of time to impart a deep flavor rather than a watery foundation.”

Jolley adjusts the gas cooker’s fire and scurries inside to the kitchen. With the stock finally underway, he unwinds, and, alongside Herring, settles into a rhythm of chopping other ingredients.

Born to parents from Hyde and Beaufort counties, Jolley tells me that he hails from a long line of fish stew makers. Any occasion could be a reason for fish stew. Chilly spring nights, card games, birthdays. Jolley’s recipe is “just a mix of watching people cook stew.”

“I try to keep a stew like it’s always been done.”

In the beginning

People have been simmering fish stews over open fires for centuries. Scientists discovered well-preserved traces of marine fish and shellfish fats in 15,000-year-old Japanese cooking pottery.

Many countries boast signature fish stews that began as fishermen cobbling together a meal at the end of their workdays or families making the most of what they had: saffron-laced French bouillabaisse; hot and sour Thai tom yum; coriander-laced Portuguese caldeirada; and spicy Malay fish head curry, to name a few.

Early English settlers often get credit for inspiring Eastern North Carolina’s fish stew, but diverse hands contributed to the pot.

“I want to know who put the tomato soup in it,” seafood chef Ricky Moore says.

At his acclaimed Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham, Moore celebrates African American influences that shaped the coastal N.C. cooking he grew up with in New Bern. Moore has seen assorted fish stews: potatoes and no potatoes, tomatoes and no tomatoes, smoked turkey necks instead of salted pork and the cornmeal dumplings that Moore himself adds to fish stew.

North Carolina’s seafood chowders and stews are customarily simple — just onions, potatoes and seafood, maybe bacon, although some think the pork overrides the seafood’s flavor. Tomatoes did not take hold in America until the early 1800s. By then, the Spanish, Italians, Portuguese and French were all putting tomatoes in their fish stews. Moore suspects N.C. cooks who followed suit with fresh or home-canned tomatoes found a shortcut in commercially canned tomato soup first sold in 1897.

Fish stew modifications have also combined taste, creativity and ego, especially at church socials, the center of community life and the place where people showed off their cooking skills in North Carolina’s once-isolated coastal plain.

“Different churches would have fish stews,” Herring recalls from his childhood. “They do barbecue, they do chicken and they do fish stew. That was kind of the three seasons of the church fundraiser.”

The most blatant adjustments happen at the Shad Festival Fish Stew Cook-off, where cooks battle every February in Grifton.

“I got one guy that cooks it, and he puts a lot of sausages in it. And saltwater mussels. He must put $150 worth of stuff in it … It almost wasn’t fish stew,” cook-off organizer Tommy Sugg says. “I tasted it. I liked it,” but share that opinion with aficionados of the traditional stew and “you could be tarred and feathered,” Sugg adds, laughing. “These people are pretty serious about it.”

Variations didn’t surprise Sharon Peele Kennedy, who chronicled historic N.C. seafood recipes and created new ones for her cookbook “What’s for Supper with Sharon Peele Kennedy.” Tinkering dates way back, before supermarkets and gourmet stores.

“They used what they had. Potatoes, peppers, onions. What grew in the garden,” Peele Kennedy told me at her Hatteras home before she passed away in January 2024. Eggs from the henhouse added extra protein to nourish hard-working families when fish harvests were slim.

The cardinal sin

Both native North Carolinians and newcomers to the state brag about attending fish stews. The unanointed dream of landing in a backyard like Jolley’s to see if eggs really do float on top and witness a coastal N.C. tradition disappearing as quickly as undeveloped waterfront property.

No matter which recipe lucky attendees may encounter, they’ll witness one steadfast conviction: Nobody stirs the pot.

“Really, the hardest I’ve ever seen a man get hit was when he walked up to a pot of fish stew and stirred it. And he got knocked right off his feet,” Jolley says.

Eastern North Carolina fish stew harmonizes fish and potato chunks as large or slightly larger than a soup spoon. If whole fish are used, they must retain enough shape so that diners can easily pick the bones. Cooks layer ingredients in a heavy stock pot set over a low flame, a combination that ensures nothing at the bottom of the pot burns. Stirring crumbles components, consequently ruining the stew’s integrity.

I ease away from the cooker as Jolley and Herring begin building their stew, enough for 20 people. They use 8 pounds of drum, 5 pounds of white potatoes, 3 pounds of sliced onions, 1 pound of diced bacon, 2 quarts of home-canned tomatoes and that essential fish stock.

To make the stock, Jolley poached the drum’s boney frame with bay leaves in about two gallons of water for nearly two hours. He renders diced fatback in another huge kettle.

Next, he and Herring lay sliced onions over the fatback, then potatoes, fish and tomatoes. They repeat the process before Herring scatters sliced potato rounds all over the top to “seal everything down.” Jolley pours in the steaming-hot fish stock to cover everything by a few inches.

The seasonings? “That’s a secret,” Jolley says, although both men agree salt, pepper and red pepper flakes are essential.

The stew cooks covered for about two hours. A smaller batch might take one hour, Herring says. “The longer you let it simmer, the better off it’s going to taste. It doesn’t over cook because you’re not letting it sit there and boil. Barely bubbling,” Herring emphasizes. “Then you drop a few eggs and it’s time to eat.”

How many eggs? “At least a dozen,” Herring advises, then corrects himself. “At least two dozen, depending on the size of the fish stew, because, I mean, the egg’s the prize of the fish stew.”

Jolley likes yolks on the soft side, but he says yolks are usually cooked through. “Because a lot of times, it’s kind of one of those things where it is ready, but everyone is still kind of shooting the shit, taking some shots of liquor until someone says, ‘Oh yeah, let’s eat.’”

Herring passes around a bottle of bourbon. Before long, fish stew opining and storytelling begins. Guests debate if fish heads make better stock. They recall old-timers who shunned filets for fish on the bone. Remember that guy who agreed to bring the fish and then showed up with six cans of salmon? Eyes roll. Oh, and those housemates who kept freshwater bowfin alive in the bathtub until it was time to use one for fish stew.

Moment of enlightenment

Banter quiets when Jolley starts setting up a buffet. Cornbread, obligatory with fish stew, is hush puppies Jolley fried in a cast-iron skillet passed down from his grandmother to his mother and then to him. Creamy, old-fashioned slaw fades green to white, nary a fleck of fancy purple cabbage or orange carrot. Sweet iced tea fills tall Ball jars. Lemon pie’s lightly toasted meringue peaks so correctly that Jolley’s ancestors are surely singing praises from on high.

Finally, he dips a wooden ladle into the stew’s layers, releasing heavenly aromas. As each guest steps up to the pot, Jolley asks “Would you like eggs?”

“Pardon?” one man replies.

“Would you like eggs?”

“Um, Sure.”

Herring chuckles. “That was a test,” he tells the hesitant gentleman. “If you would have said no, we would have kicked you out.”

Soon, mms and mm-hmms join a chorus of cardinals in the trees. “And the great thing is it’s better the next day,” Herring says, adding only half-jokingly that the only thing he would have done differently is add more eggs.

Jolley smiles. “I’m sure it would be good if you put a bunch of ginger and turmeric in it, sort of drift from the traditional flavor, but at the end of the day…” Everyone gets his point.

While pie is served, Wilmington-based Folkstone String Band fires up its picks, bows and upright bass. Guests listen to old bluegrass songs in the contented silence of their own memories.

Like oyster roasts and shrimp boils, fish stew is “an art form passed down,” Herring says. “This is the only way you can continue to experience it and hopefully get somebody else that’s interested and wants to learn about it to do it. If you don’t, it dies.”

WANCHESE — Started as a small business 88 years ago by a native Outer Banks fisherman, the Wanchese Fish Co., now a global behemoth, is closing the doors of its production fish offloading and packing operations here.

The fish operation on Mill Landing Road in this historic fishing village on the south end of Roanoke Island will be shuttered March 29, confirmed Vice President of Public Relations Joel Richardson at Suffolk, Virginia-based Cooke Inc. in an email Tuesday to Coastal Review.

Wanchese Fish Co., located along the wharf in Wanchese Marine Industrial Park, was purchased by Cooke Seafood USA in 2015, part of the Cooke family’s international aquaculture and seafood company. The Wanchese company had maintained its family-owned operation after the sale. 

Wanchese Trawl & Supply Co., a marine and fishing equipment retail store that Wanchese Fish Co. started in 1976, will remain open, Richardson said. Also, Shoreland Transport USA, an associated cargo and freight company based in Suffolk, will continue to operate its Outer Banks route.

“We will be providing support and services to our employees as part of our transition package,” Richardson said in the email.

Further information on the number of employees who will be affected and other details about the closure were unavailable Tuesday, but one employee who declined to be identified said it was about 10.

But the loss of jobs is much smaller than the implications of downsizing one of the most iconic and historically significant businesses on the Outer Banks.

From its start in 1936 as a fish processing plant established by W.R. Etheridge, a Wanchese fisherman from a centuries-old Outer Banks family, Wanchese Fish Co. was considered groundbreaking at the time, according to the company’s website.

In 1946, Etheridge’s new son-in-law, Malcolm Daniels, a member of another old Outer Banks family, was put in charge of the company. Daniels and his wife Maude had 15 children, all of whom contributed in different ways to building the company into an international seafood supply powerhouse.

For generations, the Etheridge and Daniels families were renowned not just for their reputation as innovators in the fish production, packing and shipping business but also for their dominance in the seafood industry culture on the Outer Banks.

The already successful business really took off in the late 1990s, when it developed scallop “medallions” by binding small sea scallops with natural protein into larger scallop shapes, the website said. The new product proved to be extremely popular and profitable.

The company subsequently opened a 300,000-square-foot facility in Suffolk with a processing plant, cold storage and corporate offices. Fishing operations and offices were also opened in Europe and South America.

Describing itself as a “vertically integrated seafood harvester, processor, and distributor,” Wanchese Fish Co. said it has harvested more than “4,000 tons of wild scallops, shrimp, oysters, southern king crab, and other seafood products each year.”

Cooke Inc., headquartered in New Brunswick, Canada, is a “family-owned, vertically integrated sea farming and wild fishery corporation” that ships its products to 65 countries, according to its website. It operates salmon farming operations in Atlantic Canada, Maine, Washington, Chile and Scotland.

Featured Image

Fishing trawlers are protected from recent strong winds in a boatyard on the Sleepy Point peninsula between Gloucester and Marshallberg in Down East Carteret County. Photo: Dylan Ray

Foreign shrimp imports are overwhelming the country’s inventories of shrimp and driving market prices for locally sourced shrimp to record lows, prompting widespread calls from elected officials and organizations throughout southern Atlantic and Gulf Coast states for the federal government to declare a fishery resource disaster.

Governors of coastal states from North Carolina to Florida to Texas are being pressed to ask U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to determine a fishery resource disaster for the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery.

In what one North Carolina coastal county’s board of commissioners refer to as an “unprecedented catastrophic crisis,” shrimpers are struggling to maintain operations because they’re making substantially less for their catch while paying historically high fuel prices and other inflation-driven costs.

Shrimpers are also being forced to dock their freezer boats, or vessels with onboard freezers, because they can’t move their product in a market flooded with frozen shrimp from overseas.

Their recourse is turning largely to selling their catch dockside to local clientele and restaurants and seafood markets that conscientiously serve and sell locally sourced seafood.

Last week, the American Shrimp Processors Association, or ASPA, filed anti-dumping petitions on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador and Indonesia. Dumping is the import of goods below normal value.

The group also filed countervailing duty petitions, or import taxes created to offset an exporting country’s subsidies, on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Imports from those countries last year exceeded 1.5 billion pounds — more than 90% of all U.S. shrimp imports — and $6.6 billion, according to the association.

“If successful, the tariffs should help discipline imports and provide a vital lifeline to a domestic industry that is desperately fighting for its survival,” the association said.

In late August, the Southern Shrimp Alliance sent letters to Gov. Roy Cooper and the governors of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas asking them to consider submitting a regionwide request for a fishery resource disaster determination.

Congressman Vicente Gonzalez Jr., D-Texas, took a similar request directly to the Commerce Department Sept. 29, asking Raimondo to initiate a review and fishery resource disaster determination for fisheries on the Gulf.

Under the federally enacted Fishery Resource Disasters Improvement Act of 2022, fishers may be entitled to financial assistance when a disaster is determined, including a change “that results in significant loss of access to the fishery resources … for a substantial period of time and results in significant revenue loss … due to an allowable cause.”

Cooper’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.

The governor is starting to get similar calls to take action from elected officials representing North Carolina’s coastal areas.

The Onslow County Board of Commissioners is among the latest of the state’s coastal counties to join a growing chorus of local elected officials asking the federal government to step in.

A resolution the board unanimously passed during a mid-October meeting states, “The consequences of the inundation of imported shrimp into our markets have caused significant revenue loss and loss of access to the shrimp fishery resource itself, for small family-owned fishing businesses and other supporting businesses.”

Boards of commissioners in Pamlico and Craven counties adopted similar resolutions earlier this fall.

“This is important for the coastal communities in North Carolina to step out and share this because, as the resolution has stated, it is having a major impact on the local shrimpers and fishermen here and the biggest (impact) is by the time they finish loading up the shrimp boats to head out they’re already way behind on what they’re going to make,” Onslow Commissioner Chairman Tim Foster said at the board’s Oct. 16 meeting. “What this is doing is driving down the cost of the shrimp and it is on the verge of eliminating the local businesses in our areas of Sneads Ferry and Swansboro.”

Davis Seafood Inc. in Sneads Ferry has been moving most of its shrimp locally, according to Joseph Davis.

And though the family-owned business has been able to sell what it has brought in locally, Davis Seafood still feels the pinch of low shrimp prices not accounting for high fuel costs.

“It’s a very unlevel playing field that we have to deal with,” he said in a telephone interview. “The overall price does affect us. We did freeze a lot of shrimp this summer when the boats were working in Pamlico Sound. We probably froze more shrimp than usual.”

Davis said he has a brother-in-law who operates a freezer boat, one that probably hasn’t been out to catch shrimp in about two months because of the lack of demand, he said.

NC Catch Board of Directors Chair Dr. Barbara Garrity-Blake said the levels of shrimp imports to the U.S. are “just unprecedented.”

“They’re just off the charts right now,” she said.

“We’ve essentially become a dumping ground for imported shrimp, especially from China. Wholesale prices right now are so low and fuel prices are high so it’s really hard to make the numbers work,” Garrity-Blake continued. “Right now, across the United States, our freezer operations are filled with shrimp because this dumping has been going on so long our local wholesalers can’t even move their shrimp. There are more commercial fishermen that are selling directly to consumers. But, that doesn’t work for everybody. Not everybody’s set up to do that.”

NC Catch works with local Catch programs aimed at educating the public about locally sourced seafood.

The organization promotes the benefits of eating local seafood, touting everything from a difference in taste to the fact that seafood fished from U.S. waters is not pumped full of preservatives needed to survive being shipped from regions thousands of miles away.

“Think about the carbon footprint if nothing else,” Garrity-Blake said. “All that fuel requires getting that seafood from one side of the planet to the other when we have the best product right here, right here in the Pamlico Sound, right here in the Core Sound that was caught last night, fresh, 100% organic, no chemicals.”

Seafood imports do not need to be completely shuttered altogether because, in order to meet national demand, some level of imports is needed, she said.

“What we need to do is strike a balance,” Garrity-Blake said.

She said educating consumers across the country is key to ultimately turning the tide on reducing the amount of shrimp imports coming into the country.

“We believe that the consumers are the sleeping giant and all of those consumers have the power to turn a lot of this around,” Garrity-Blake said. “Our message to consumers is to ask where your seafood comes from and then demand that you get local seafood and eventually restaurants, the markets, are going to have to meet that demand. We like to stress to consumers that their really only access to local seafood is through commercial fishermen, unless they’re fortunate enough to have the means to travel to the coast, to have a boat, to be really good at say, casting a net.”

She said the problem is “of our own making” because the U.S. government has heavily invested in economic projects in developing countries where cheaper labor costs undercut market prices on home soil.

Bradley Styron of Quality Seafood in Cedar Island said fishermen can’t maintain the lifestyle they’re accustomed to “on third-world wages.”

“Around here people are having to do whatever they can to try to make it,” he said. “Fuel is high. Shrimp are cheap. Before the imports came along we didn’t have this problem. It ought to be worth them making some phone calls to their senators and legislators. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. They want a decent product and the only way to have that is through a strong commercial fishing industry.”

A long-running joint venture between Carteret County’s fishing industry and restaurants to advertise seasonal seafood caught by county fishermen is set to bring the freshest catch possible to some lucky winners.

Carteret Catch is offering a chance to win a dining experience for six aboard a 90-foot working trawler on the Beaufort waterfront in October.

The trawler’s captain and owner will greet the winners with a glass (or two) of champagne, the group said. That will be followed by appetizers and entertainment from Bryan and Barbara Garrity-Blake playing zydeco tunes.

Guest chef Eddy Myers will prepare a four-course meal featuring local seafood and wine pairings.

Tickets for Carteret Catch’s Dinner on a Trawler Raffle are $25 and available at the Carteret Catch website.

The drawing is scheduled for Aug. 31. The dinner is Oct. 14.

Carteret Catch helps people find, identify and enjoy North Carolina seafood landed by local fishermen. Look for the Carteret Catch logo at restaurants and markets.

Guest commentary

June 8 is World Oceans Day, a global commemoration to foster ways we can better conserve and manage oceans and all they provide: our beaches and the family memories we create on them; recreational opportunities, such as fishing, sailing, and whale-watching; and our coastal economies, which thrive by supporting those recreational activities and harvesting and selling seafood.

As the co-owner of Locals Seafood, for me it’s a day to think about the ocean’s bounty and the opportunities it provides to my family, allowing us to proudly make our living selling a fresh and local product. While the global goal of this year’s World Oceans Day is to work toward protecting at least 30% of our “blue planet” by 2030, my interest is local, specifically on North Carolina’s seagrasses. Often overlooked and underappreciated, seagrasses are not just a picturesque element of our coastal ecosystems; they serve as a barometer for the overall health of our estuarine systems and the foundation of our entire coastal economy.

The Tar Heel State has about 120,000 acres of seagrass habitats hugging our barrier islands and enriching estuaries along the coast, more than any other state on the Eastern Seaboard. Unfortunately, in North Carolina and beyond, seagrass faces a troubling decline.

Seagrass beds provide food, refuge and nurseries for more than 75% of our marine life, including the shrimp, blue crabs and finfish so important to my business and our coastal economy. These underwater meadows also act as vital carbon sinks, capturing equivalent amounts of carbon to what’s stored by 80,000 acres of forests, and improve water quality by absorbing excess nutrients and reducing sedimentation, ensuring optimal conditions for the growth and survival of marine life. The intricate relationship between seagrass and our most important marine species highlights the importance of protecting and conserving seagrass habitats for the sustainable management of our fisheries, shellfish industry, and overall coastal economy.

But seagrasses are threatened by the same climate change-driven phenomenon they can help us overcome. Our more frequent and severe coastal storms can rip through the beds, causing damage that can take years to regenerate. Seagrass beds rarely are found in more than 6 feet of water because they require sunlight to thrive, but if the water is clouded by sediment or pollutants, they can’t get enough light to grow. Rising water temperatures, which promote the growth of light-distorting algae, and poor water quality threaten seagrasses.

Polluted runoff also poses a significant threat to seagrass habitats. As a seafood dealer driving between the Triangle and the coast, I see firsthand the sources of nonpoint pollution causing nutrient and sediment-laden runoff into our coastal estuaries. Various land uses introduce excessive nutrients into our delicate estuarine ecosystems by carrying fertilizers and sediment into nearby water bodies, where they fuel the growth of harmful algae blooms and smother seagrass beds, ultimately leading to their demise.

The Earth is losing the equivalent of two football fields of seagrasses every hour, and while North Carolina’s seagrass population is faring a bit better, it’s still declining at an estimated 1% to 2% annually.  

“Nowhere are we seeing increases in seagrasses in North Carolina,” said Jud Kenworthy, a retired scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Beaufort, and an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, told Carolina Public Press in 2021. “And one thing is clear: If you don’t have seagrass, you’re going to lose fisheries.”

Seagrass loss is a clear symptom of more significant issues plaguing our coastal regions. These losses act as an alarming warning sign, highlighting the degradation and imbalance within our delicate ecosystems.

Fortunately, there are simple yet impactful actions that make a positive difference. Sustainable alternatives to traditional lawn fertilizers can help significantly improve water quality. Recreational fishers and boaters can play a role by reducing boat wakes and preventing propeller scarring, which can disturb and uproot seagrass. And to make a lasting impact, we must support and strengthen state efforts to protect the clarity of our waters.

Our state has already taken steps to conserve its seagrass beds. In late 2021, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission updated its Coastal Habitat Protection Plan (CHPP), a blueprint to protect and restore seagrasses and other estuarine habitats. It provides specific direction to state commissions and agencies, and identifies ways that towns, organizations, businesses, and even individuals can help protect and restore coastal habitats.

World Oceans Day gives us an opportunity to both appreciate the progress North Carolinians have made and to also assess the work we still must do to keep our communities economically strong and environmentally resilient.

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Federal fisheries officials say seafood is good for people, good for the economy and good for the planet and have unveiled a draft plan for supporting the seafood industry.

The public is invited to review and submit comments on the draft National Seafood Strategy released Tuesday.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries said the strategy underscores NOAA’s commitment to seafood sector resilience and aligns with the administration’s goals for economic recovery, environmental sustainability and climate resilience.

Related: Seafood and A Healthy Diet

NOAA Fisheries also noted that the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health points to the need for increased seafood consumption in the United States, which the strategy aims to address.

Officials said the strategy also responds to the unprecedented challenges facing the U.S. seafood industry, including climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, new technologies and other ocean uses, and significant labor shortages and aging infrastructure.

The plan includes four goals: sustain or increase sustainable U.S. wild capture production, increase sustainable U.S. aquaculture production, foster access to domestic and global markets for the U.S. seafood, and strengthen the entire U.S. seafood sector.

Public comments are integral to finalizing the strategy and helping guide the direction of work to support the seafood sector, NOAA Fisheries said.

Written comments may be submitted online until March 16.

NOAA Fisheries is hosting two virtual listening sessions, March 2 and March 9, to present the draft strategy and gather input. The agency said it would schedule additional consultations with Tribal nations on request.

The sessions are scheduled as follows:

• Listening Session 1: 2 p.m. March 2.
• Listening Session 2: 5 p.m. March 9.

The inspiration for the famous American dish Oysters Rockefeller had nothing to do with oysters or billionaire oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller and certainly not with North Carolina foodways, except that the dish is so enduring many chefs along the state’s shore serve a version of their own.

Oysters on the half shell crowned with a buttery roux full of chopped, fresh herbs and then broiled until the topping becomes just crusty was invented at the legendary New Orleans restaurant Antoine’s.

The year was 1899.  Rockefeller controlled the nation’s oil industry while Antoine’s chef Jules Alciatore faced a shortage of French snails. He needed an escargot substitute.

Trained in Paris, Alciatore took the idea of France’s classic escargots à la Bourguignonne recipe, which relies on butter and herbs, and applied it to oysters. He added some twists and named his new, ultra-rich dish after the richest man in America.

Rockefeller apparently never tried the creation. It was a hit, nonetheless, and remains on menus nationwide to this day, even though the recipe is top-secret.

“Jules Alciatore on his deathbed reportedly demanded eternal secrecy from all who knew just exactly what went into that shell,” according to the book “New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories” (University Press of Mississippi, 2009).

Antoine’s owners still honor Alciatore’s order, but longtime New Orleans food writer Tom Fitzmorris is certain the recipe he published in his 2006 book “Tom Fitzmorris’ New Orleans Food: More Than 250 of the City’s Best Recipes” is as close as any cook can hope to get to the original formula.

Recipe analysts generally agree Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine’s contain butter, parsley and bread crumbs. Fitzmorris expands the list to celery, green onion, watercress, fennel and other seasonings including ketchup and New Orleans’ own Peychaud’s Bitters, created in 1830.

Fitzmorris reported that Bernard Guste, the fifth-generation proprietor of Antoine’s, declared the recipe “embarrassingly close to the real thing.”

Back in 1912, Winnipeg Free Press writer Jane Eddington claimed to have been handed the recipe by Alciatore himself, according to research at foodtimeline.org.

“Jules is extremely reluctant about giving away the secrets of his kitchen, but after some coaxing he was induced to part with the following while slowly sipping his cognac after luncheon,” Eddington wrote in the March 27, 1912, edition of the Canadian newspaper.

“Huitres en Coquille a la Rockefeller–Raw oysters with a dressing made as follows, the quantity of the ingredients to depend upon the size of the order. One bunch of shallots, one bunch of parsley, two pounds of butter, one bottle of Spanish walnuts, half a bunch of tarragon leaves, two stale loaves of French bread, salt and pepper, and a liberal sprinkling of tabasco sauce. All of these things are pounded into a pulp in a mortar, and then ground in a sausage machine, the mass being finally passed through a needle sifter. The oysters on the half shell are covered with the sauce and then placed in a hot oven to bake just three minutes. The oysters must be served at once.”

Was Alciatore pulling Eddington’s leg? Was Guste trying to keep Fitzmorris off track. Who knows?

What’s certain is that Oysters Rockefeller is not what most restaurants today pass off as the real thing: oysters baked under a blanket of creamed spinach, bacon and parmesan cheese. It seems Alciatore’s secret recipe inspired a baked oysters craze that takes on many forms.

Along the North Carolina coast, Oysters Rockefeller has lots of cousins.

The versions that feel most like a taste of the Carolina coast feature local, salty oysters and collards that grow so well in the region’s sandy soil. Creamed collards and onion bacon jam top baked oysters at City Kitchen in Beaufort. The Boiler Room menu in Kinston lists Oyster Boilerfeller wearing collards, bacon, spicy tomato and shaved Parmesan.

Visitors to the Outer Banks food festival Taste of the Beach 2018 will be treated to Oysters Rockefeller made with arugula, gouda cheese and tasso ham March 22 at Outer Banks Brewing Station.

Brie and roasted garlic go on Oysters Mon Louis at Ocracoke Oyster Co. on Ocracoke Island. Fresh spinach, peppered bacon, gorgonzola and white wine cream sauce is the combination at Provisions in Southern Shores.

At Pinpoint in Wilmington, baked oysters are served three ways: Rockefeller, with wilted greens, Benton’s bacon and Pernod; Piperade, with chilis and cornbread; and Hollandaise, with blue crab and whey hot sauce.

Chargrilled oysters at The Pilot House, also in Wilmington, mean smoky morsels beneath butter, parmesan, garlic, panko crumbs, lemon, hot sauce, cayenne, and chives. Years ago, the restaurant served a different riff on Oysters Rockefeller. Chefs spooned tender, chopped collards into the half shells and then laid the oysters on the greens. Country ham, blue cheese and chopped pecans were the finishing touches, a masterpiece that surely would have inspired Alciatore himself.

Front page featured photo: larryjh1234/flickr

Brothers Joe and Sam Romano, top and center, teamed with childhood friend Nathan King to chase a dream of fishing for a living and selling their catch. Photos: Seaview Crab Co.

WILMINGTON — The sledge hammer he uses to pound through a thick concrete floor racks Sam Romano’s body like that of a man experiencing religious ecstasy. When the tool’s roaring ceases, Romano, hair wild in all directions, looks up, shakes off the madness and smiles a rapturous grin.

Surrounded by thick concrete floors and walls in a huge, mostly gutted building, Romano has much work to do, which makes him happy. This old seafood market he and his business partners – brother Joe Romano and friend Nathan King — are restoring in Wilmington proves the team’s mantra: If you sell good, fresh, local seafood, customers will come – especially if they don’t have to drive.

Just five years after deciding to apply their college degrees to commercial fishing and seafood retail operations that started from the back of a truck they parked along roadsides, the trio is readying their second brick-and-mortar Seaview Crab Co. seafood market in Wilmington and watching interest grow in their innovative online sales segment.

“We were just talking recently about what we’re about and why we’re so successful,” Sam Romano says. “It’s just about connecting people to what’s around them locally.”

Rather than lament water pollution, declining seafood stocks and too many regulations — constant commercial fishing industry stressors – as well as long days and hard work, the Romano brothers and King relish the future.

“That’s the one thing that draws me to it (fishing) — the challenge,” Joe Romano says. “We can make it when others say we can’t.”

Childhood friends from Virginia Beach, Va., the threesome’s crabbing life began when Sam Romano about 10 years ago entered the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where he earned an environmental studies degree. During school, he worked at the old seafood house that the business partners are restoring, but Sam Romano preferred crabbing, a part-time job he watched his father do.

He convinced his brother Joe, who holds a masters degree in English and was a real estate broker at the time, to join him for crabbing around Wilmington.

Meantime, King was earning a master’s in naval architecture and ocean engineering, but he spent college summers living and crabbing with the Romanos. Working the water was enjoyable; access to the fishing life was easy.

“It was really an ideal business that you could start from the ground with simply 50 pots,” King says.

The men at first sold crabs wholesale, but declining prices convinced them to court the public directly.

After peddling their catch from pick-up trucks near Fayetteville and on Carolina Beach Road in Wilmington, the partners in the spring of 2009 launched their first Seaview Crab Co.

The trio will retain the 6458 Carolina Beach Rd. store when their second, much larger location opens this spring. The 6,500-square-foot building they purchased is at 1515 Marstellar St.

A third of the new building will be dedicated retail space, offering N.C. fish, shellfish and live crabs. Sam Romano gets excited thinking about children being able to see live crabs in a tank.

Other areas hosting massive coolers and freezers will serve the storage and wholesale aspects of the business. Later, one section may host a weekly market for restaurant chefs and owners, Sam Romano said.

“We’re envisioning this as more of an everybody-and-anybody market,” Sam Romano said.

The first Seaview Crab Co. opened on Carolina Beach Road, top, and will expand this spring to a second location in a remodeled fish house on Marstellar St. Photos: Liz Biro

Sixty-to-80-hour work weeks take a toll, but King and the Romano brothers stay inspired to drive Seaview into the future.

They regularly announce their fresh catch on social media, including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. At the company website, consumers find educational videos about fishing and seafood. They may also sign up for Seaview’s “Wilmington Fresh Seafood Update” newsletter delivered via email and also on Facebook. The publication spotlights what’s available from North Carolina waters, how much it costs and how to cook it.

The business partners are also expanding a shipping operation that provides overnight delivery of fresh seafood to all of North Carolina, southern Virginia and most of South Carolina.

“I don’t think any of us really thought we’d be doing this right now,” Joe Romano says. “This whole business…everything a lot of times is against you, whether you’re a fishermen or selling seafood or whatever.

“Each struggle has kind of got us more into it. We kind of reach a brick wall and we’re kind of, well, let’s innovate.”

Yet the men don’t consider themselves new-age fishermen. In fact, they still operate a small roadside seafood stand on weekends near Fayetteville and host home-style seafood feasts to show their appreciation to friends, customers and fellow fishermen. They, as most watermen, are can-do people merely flowing with the tide toward the best catch, Sam Romano says

“Fishermen are capable of what we’re talking about, actually more capable than a lot of other different vocations because when you’re fishing,” he says, “you’ve got to be able to change your mindset.”