NORTH CAROLINA STATE LIBRARY 

 RALEIGH 



W. C. 



Doc. 



MAR 3 1 1977 



OCTOBER, 1976 



1235 Burlington Laboratories 

 NCSU, Raleigh, N.C. 27607 Tel: (919) 737-2U5U 



mm 



I® mm 



Things might have turned out differently for 

 Macon Meekins if Congress had been able to turn 

 back the clock last winter when it passed the 

 Fishery Management and Conservation Act of 

 1976 — the 200-mile limit, or extended jurisdiction. 



But, Meekins and other North Carolina fisher- 

 men who once made a living from river herring 



(alewives) have given up. In 1969, the river he rrin g 

 catch -was 20 million pounds. But by ,l$7#?#fllSa 

 dwindled to 5.8 million pounds. Foreign vessels 

 working off North Carolina had overfished the 

 river herring and depleted spawning stocks. 



To Meekins and his fellow river herring fisher- 

 men, the Iojs^ajnoum^t0>p6ughly $300,000 a year 

 atijjpday's prices and figuring on an average sus- 

 tained catch of 12 million pounds a year. .^0ffmm 



Similar situations around, the country led Con- 

 gress to adopt the 20Q^mile limit which is designed 



