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A commercial fishing boat leaves the island at dawn 



than half of these fish full time; the 

 rest piece together incomes from boat- 

 building or outside jobs. But though 

 they are few in number, these fisher- 

 men are exceedingly diverse in the 

 ways they work- They trawl, dredge, 

 net. rake. kick, hook and tong almost 



[everything that swims in the salt. 



I One of their most striking qualities, 

 Hepburn says, is their inventiveness. 

 Harkers Island fishermen developed, 

 apparently independently of other 

 regions, a way of catching shrimp: 

 channel-netting. Harkers Islanders 

 began making channel nets in the 

 1930s, and the gear was almost un- 

 known elsewhere along the East Coast 

 until recently, when its fuel-saving ad- 

 vantages made it attractive to fisher- 

 men to the south. A channel net looks 

 something like a trawl, but it is 

 anchored in place in or near a channel 

 with a good tidal current and is fished 

 at ebb tide, when the currents 

 sometimes carry shrimp in swarms. 

 Once the net is set, a fishermen posi- 

 tions his boat over the net, shuts down 

 his engine, and empties a tail bag full 

 of shrimp every 20 minutes or so. 



"One night "I was aboard with a 

 fisherman when he harvested a thou- 

 sand pounds of shrimp in five hours," 

 Hepburn recalls. "His total gas cost 

 was about two dollars." 



Big trawlers often catch more 

 shrimp, but they can burn hundreds of 



gallons of fuel, at well over a dollar a 

 gallon. 



There are 22 or 23 good channel net 

 locations around Harkers Island but a 

 spot called "Gold Mine," in the 

 "straits" between the island and the 

 mainland, is considered to be the best. 

 The islanders have developed a 

 rigorous set of unwritten laws govern- 

 ing prime spots like Gold Mine. To es- 

 tablish his right to channel net in a 

 popular location, a fisherman must 

 first "lay on a set." For example, if 

 James is fishing Gold Mine and Doug 

 wants some of the action, then Doug 

 must line up his fishing boat and wait 

 with gear aboard, directly behind 

 James. When James hauls out, after 

 maybe four or five hours of fishing, he 

 must yield to Doug. Doug may spend a 

 day and most of a night laying on a set, 

 or he may pay a young person to man 

 the boat for him. 



But it's not just channel netting 

 that brings out the islanders' skill at 

 self-regulation. There are equally ef- 

 fective and time-honored rules govern- 

 ing long-line and long-haul fishing. The 

 captains of long-haul crews meet infor- 

 mally at the beginning of each season 

 and list the best fishing locations. 

 They assign a sequence that allows the 

 crews to rotate through all the spots, 

 so that each crew holds the rights to an 

 area each day of the season, except 

 Sundays. 



Perhaps partly because they have 

 been so successful governing them- 

 selves, the fishermen of Harkers Island 

 view governmental agencies of all 

 kinds with suspicion. Responding to a 

 survey that asked who they thought 

 had the most influence on fisheries 

 policy-making, the Harkers Island 

 fishermen placed commercial fisher- 

 men last among five groups. Fisheries 

 officials, however, said that they weigh 

 the fishermen's opinions higher than 

 all other groups but one, the seafood 

 dealers. 



But fishermen and officials agreed 

 on the best ways to publicize new 

 policies. And, in some cases, Harkers 

 Island fishermen have even begun to 

 ask for more state regulation. Sixty 

 percent of the commercial fishermen 

 surveyed wanted the state to outlaw 

 clam-kicking, which has been suspect- 

 ed of damaging shellfish nursery areas. 



As Sabella points out. many of the 

 new problems facing fishermen — 

 competition from outsiders, fuel costs, 

 pollution and scarce supplies of some 

 species — are beyond the fishermen's 

 abilities to control. 



"I think the North Carolina Divi- 

 sion of Marine Fisheries has boosted 

 tremendously its credibility among 

 Down East fishermen," Sabella says. 

 "They've done so by getting out and 



Continued on next page 



asking the fishermen what they 

 think." 



One of the fishermen they ask is Ben 

 Brooks, a Harkers Island native and 

 graduate of East Carolina University. 

 Brooks gave up a teaching career to 

 devote himself to commercial fishing 

 on the island. Brooks believes that his 

 way of life is in serious trouble, largely 

 because of the scramble for new gear, 

 bigger boats and bigger catches. 



"You have to go harder to make a 

 living," he says. "You have less leisure 

 time. You could have a certain trawl 

 this year, catching shrimp, and next 

 year somebody could pop up a new 

 idea, and the following year. you'll 

 probably have to get a new trawl." 



It is the small-scale commercial 

 fishing operation that is going to be 

 weeded out. Brooks says. 



"The shrimp are going to be protec- 

 ted there under the grass, moving 

 north. And the man that's got some 

 other source of income is protected, 

 because whether he catches anything 

 or not, he's going to get by. But the 

 commercial man has to go right on 

 through the hard times." 



Marcus Hepburn sees a similarity in 

 the evolution of farms into agri- 

 businesses, and the new trend away 

 from the kind of one- family fishing 

 operations found on Harkers Island. 



"The thing you have to ask yourself 

 is, will we continue to have small 



Photo by Steve Mi 



fishing operations?" he says. "It could 

 go the route of agriculture: bigger 

 business units, bigger boats. And if 

 that happens, the Harkers Island 

 fishermen won't be able to adapt. 

 They enjoy their independence and 

 won't give it up." 



But even if they lose their boats 

 tomorrow, fishermen on Harkers 

 Island won't line up for handouts. 



"These people have a wide range of 

 skills," Jim Sabella says. "A lot of 

 them have built their own homes, in 

 addition to their own boats. They do 

 electrical work, they do mechanical 

 work, they work with hydraulics. They 

 are rich in abilities and intelligence, 

 and they're perfectly capable of taking 

 care of themselves." 



But most of the island's fishermen 

 are operating on the assumption that 

 fishing has a future there. Even so, the 

 pressures are giving some islanders 

 pause to wonder. In a study of how 

 fishermen's wives regard their lives 

 and their husband's careers, Sabella 

 and Hepburn found a reluctance on 

 the part of the women to endorse 

 fishing as a way of life for their 

 children. Almost half of the wives 

 surveyed were opposed to their sons 

 becoming fishermen. But, as Sabella 

 points out, "The women are very sup- 

 portive of their husbands' occupations, 

 in the sense that they realize that the 

 men are happy on the water, that they 



are their own bosses, that nobody in- 

 terferes with them, and that it's a good 

 life." 



The study also found that three- 

 quarters of the women worried "con- 

 siderably" or "very much" about their 

 husbands' safety. Most wanted their 

 husbands to restrict their fishing to 

 day trips and to safer areas inside 

 sounds and estuaries. 



"The fishermen's wives almost uni- 

 versally said their lives were tougher 

 than other wives'," Sabella says. 

 "They think that fishing is not ade- 

 quately rewarded, financially. But 

 that still doesn't mean, when 

 everything is said and done, that they 

 wouldn't rather stay in the fishing." 



Whatever the hardships, Harkers 

 Island has an almost astonishing hold 

 on its daughters. As Sabella puts it: 

 "The women, if they can help it, stay 

 on the island." 



Joann Brooks, who was not raised 

 on the island, but inherited the 

 Harkers Island way of life when she 

 married Ben Brooks, expresses her 

 regard for the island this way: "The 

 people are different here," she says. 

 "There's just a closeness that you have 

 over here that you don't have other 

 places." 



The August issue of Coastwatch 

 will look at Harkers Island's boat- 

 builders and social traditions. 



Marcus Hepburn (left) visits with Mary and Dallas Rose in their house on Harkers Island 



