Managing fish and fishermen 



When it comes to managing a com- 

 modity as precious as shrimp, everyone 

 has an opinion. "That creek off Core 

 Sound should be opened to shrimp- 

 ing," laments one fishermen. "It 

 should stay closed," says another. The 

 season should be shortened, gear 

 restricted, areas opened, areas closed — 

 all complaints and opinions funneled 

 into a building in Morehead City that 

 houses the managers, the North 

 Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries 

 (DMF). 



Mike Street, part of the fisheries 

 management team, says they hear it 

 all — good and bad. "Our philosophy 

 for management of the shrimp fishery 

 is to get the best yield, biologically, 

 economically and socially, from the 

 crop available," Street says. "That's 

 the only way everyone can benefit." 



For the DMF, shrimp is the most 

 valuable seafood crop they manage. 

 They spend countless hours and thou- 

 sands of state dollars to do the job. 

 They intensely sample the primary 

 nursery grounds in May and June for 

 numbers of brown shrimp present and 

 for environmental factors like salinity 

 and temperature that will affect the 

 shrimp's survival rate. For division 

 biologist, Dennis Spitsbergen, 12-hour 

 days are common as the shrimp crop 

 begins to ripen. He may spend eight to 

 10 hours aboard a DMF trawler sam- 

 pling some remote nursery area, then 

 another four hours in Morehead City 

 headquarters computing figures and 

 meeting with other management of- 

 ficials to advise them on current situa- 

 tions. 



"North Carolina's fisheries manage- 

 ment system is unique," Street says. 

 "It's a very active, responsive sys- 

 tem." The state legislature delegates 

 all authority for making regulations to 

 the state fisheries commission, which 



Photo by Kathy Hart 



meets at least four times a year. But 

 for a fishery such as the shrimp fishery, 

 where conditions vary quickly, Con- 

 nell Purvis, the division's director, can 

 issue regulations via proclamation. For 

 the shrimp fishery, most of the 

 proclamations announce openings and 

 closings of secondary nursery areas 

 where shrimp have reached a 



Photo by Kathy Hart 



Mike Street 



marketable size. (Primary nursery 

 areas are never opened to shrimping.) 

 Proclamations are posted by DMF en- 

 forcement officers and can take effect 

 as soon as 48 hours later. Usually, 

 Street says, the division tries to give 

 fishermen more notice. 



Under North Carolina's manage- 

 ment system, shrimpers can fish 

 offshore and inside waters — bays and 

 sounds — year round. These are areas 

 Marine Fisheries call "migration 

 routes" or paths by which shrimp exit 

 the nursery areas for their offshore 

 spawning grounds. Fishermen fish 

 these migration routes as the shrimp 



begin trickling out of the shallow nur- 

 sery areas. 



Street admits that under this system 

 daily catches may be lower, but he 

 says, the overall catch for everyone 

 will be greater. He points to last year's 

 record catch (the largest in over 25 

 years) as evidence the plan works. 

 "The same drought we had last year, 

 that helped us, resulted in good crops 

 in South Carolina and Georgia," Street 

 says. "But their management is quite 

 different from ours. Their manage- 

 ment is for the big boats. Very few of 

 their inside waters are open for shrimp- 

 ing. So their boats stayed out in the 

 ocean waiting for the shrimp to come 

 out. Waiting and waiting and waiting. 

 It stayed dry and they didn't come out 

 until late in the year and then all at 

 once. They couldn't get them all. Their 

 landings were low. I think our ap- 

 proach to management was justified 

 by conditions last year." 



Besides preventing the problems 

 Street says plagued Georgia and South 

 Carolina, the present management 

 system also put an end to the 

 traditional "opening day" for shrimp- 

 ing. Prior to the 1970s, shrimp season 

 opened every year around July 1. 

 Fishermen and fisheries personnel 

 alike say every shrimper in North 

 Carolina had his boat in the water that 

 first day. "You could see as many as 

 500 boats in New River on opening 

 day," Street says. "You could fly over 

 almost any bay in the state and it 

 would look like one big mud roll. Then 

 there would be a huge fish kill several 

 days later. They were catching some 

 areas out in that one day, not to men- 

 tion that they were physically disturb- 

 ing bottom areas. The system we have 

 now allows for better utilization of the 

 fishery and a calmer situation. It's bet- 

 ter for the environment, and no place 



DMF samplers check the sizes of shrimp just brought from a sampling area 



