At N.C. Marine Fisheries meeting, commercial fisherman voice frustration with regulation
Facing skeptical and sometimes fiery comments from commercial and recreational fishing interests from Beaufort to the Outer Banks, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission met at the Hilton Garden Inn in Kitty Hawk on March 12 and 13 for the first quarterly meeting of 2025. It was the first time since November of 2018 that the commission has met on the Outer Banks.
More than 30 speakers addressed the commission, consistently calling out what they criticized as questionable science and data and the effect it has had on the commercial fishing industry.
“Over-regulation has been the default course, and commercial fishermen have borne the front of it,” Joe Romano, a commercial fisherman from Wilmington told the commission. “We called it a death by a thousand cuts, one rule after another, reducing access, increasing cost, driving more water men out of business. For years, it was easy to marginalize commercial fishing because there were so few of us.”
The commission was voting on a number of management plans, including restrictions that would directly impact the livelihoods of the commercial fishing industry. Although recreational harvest will also be affected by restrictions on false albacore and spotted sea trout, the onus of the reductions in the amount of fish than can be caught will fall on commercial fishing.
During public comment, almost every speaker pointed to flawed stock assessments of the fish as well as questionable data.
“Currently we have stock assessments that have failed peer review or are not being done at all to support the possible new rules,” Dare County Commissioner Steve House said in public comment.
Chair of the Dare County Commissioners Bob Woodard made much the same point. “I’m concerned that most of the recommendations placed before this commission do not include a reliable, up to date, stock assessment of the various species in question…thus, making all the recommendations before this commission that I’ve seen in the last 12 years on my term as a commissioner, arbitrary at best,” he said.
The concern about the quality of the data being used to make decisions seems borne out by the information supplied to the commission in the draft report of the False Albacore Management Plan.
Calling for a “28.0% overall harvest reduction (27.0% Recreational, 38.0% Commercial),” the report acknowledges, “There is no baseline stock assessment for false albacore and thus, no biological basis for reducing harvest.”
Marine Fishery Commissioner Sarah Gardner was also critical of the information provided to the commissioners, noting in her remarks on the false albacore plan that the lack of evidence supporting restrictions was creating a crisis in public confidence.
“We are asking ourselves to make regulation based on no data…When we go about regulating this fish with no science, it’s going back to something that’s become really problematic. We’ve heard it over and over again today in this room that people are mistrusting the science, and now we’re going to say, trust us with no science. And that scares me,” she said.
In what was perhaps the most controversial voted of the day, the commission also voted on a plan that would reduce commercial southern flounder landings and give recreational fishing some of the commercial portion of the stock.
The motion did pass on a five to four vote, although the management plan will now go to an advisory committee for an implementation plan.
In opposing restrictions on commercial catch, Dare County Commissioner Ervin Bateman, who owns Sugar Creek Restaurant in Nags Head, pointed out the impact on commercial fishermen.
“Last year, in the month of July, I sold 15,000 people food in my restaurant for the month. Do you think somebody from New Jersey, somebody from Illinois, somebody from Canada that comes to my restaurant…they want to eat something that came from China?…No, they want to eat fish that came from [Etheridge Seafood]. They want the freshest possible thing they can get,” he said.
What a number of speakers found particularly troubling was that the rule was seen as rewarding recreational catch of the species even though Marine Fisheries data indicated recreational landings far exceeded the management allocation for the species in 2024. Commercial landings were 1.6 percent over the allocation or 5,700 pounds. Allocated 30 percent of the catch last year, recreational landings were more than 14,000 pounds over the limit.
“The commercial sector is doing exactly what they’re supposed to do,” Hatteras resident Ernie Foster, who has been a commercial and charter boat captain for over 50 years told the Voice. “What I know is that they’re taking this away from people who need it to survive.”
He also posed a question about who ultimately benefits from access to commercial fishing.
“Is this a public resource,” he asked. “Should the consumer have access to that resource. If you live in Raleigh and you have two choices. Spend [thousands] of dollars on a [boat] and go catch your own, or go the fish market.”
