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M)RTH CAROLINA STATE LIBRARY 

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FEBRUARY, 1976 



SCSI', I 



"ialeigh, N. V. 27607 Tel: (9 



19) 737-2454 



Fishing 



Yesterday, Today. . . 



It's been a long time coming, but fishing — one of our 

 nation's first industries — has finally left the days of the 

 colonists and entered the twentieth century. The road has 

 been a long one, and there are more miles yet to travel: 



Under the smooth skin of Lawrence Austin's hands are 

 bones gnarled by 81 years of life and 55 years of fishing. 

 Despite their age (and perhaps thanks to the hard work), 

 Austin's hands are steady and strong enough to tie up a bag 

 of potatoes on the back porch to keep bugs out the way Austin 

 womenfolk used to do. 



And just as Lawrence Austin's hands are still alive, so is 

 his mind alive with memories of fishing in "back days." 

 There was the time, in 1917, when the Pamlico Sound froze 

 over from shore to shore; and the time, the year slips his 

 mind, when motors for fishing boats first came to North 

 Carolina's Outer Banks around Hatteras. 



(See "Progress Hasn't," page 2) 



...And Tomorrow 



Yesterday's fisherman knew the meaning of hard work. 

 He didn't have many gadgets to help him do his job. But the 

 fish were there. They were his if he worked to get them. 



Tomorrow's fisherman probably won't know the kind of 

 grueling labor his grandfather knew. Machines will have 

 taken over a lot of the back-cracking work. 



Trouble is, tomorrow the fish might not be there. Some 

 species have been so over-fished that their number are al- 

 ready seriously low. A fisherman faced with a shortage offish 

 is a worried man — especially if he's paying off loans and 

 trying to eke out a living too. 



Demand for fish has increased dramatically over the past 

 three decades. From 1950 to 1970, the world catch jumped 

 from an estimated 46 billion pounds to 153 billion pounds. 

 Foreign fishing has accounted for most of the increase, since 



(See "As Fishing," page 4) 



