RIVER HERRING 



return to their waters of birth. 



"Herring seek shallow fingers of 

 waters — ditches, millponds, creeks 

 with sometimes only two to three 

 inches of water,' ' Manooch says. 



But often the fish find access to 

 these natal streams cut off by bridges, 

 highways, building projects and 

 beavers. 



And what man hasn't altered, he's 

 polluted, Manooch says. 



The discharge from industries and 

 waste treatment plants and the runoff 

 from farms, forests, city streets and 

 backyards funnel nutrients into the 

 sluggish Chowan and swifter Roanoke. 



During sultry North Carolina sum- 

 mers, the nutrients trigger blue- 

 green algal blooms that choke the 

 Chowan River. The blooms, Manooch 

 says, are sometimes toxic to the fish. 

 Other times they rob the river of 

 needed oxygen or crowd out tiny 

 plants the herring find more edible. 



"Anadromous fish populations are 

 declining because they must come 

 upriver to spawn and this deeply con- 

 nects them with man," Manooch says. 

 "And man has not been kind to rivers." 



Lee Wynns, co-owner of Perry- 

 Wynns Fishery Co. , once the nation's 

 largest herring processing plant, also 

 speaks disparagingly of the quality of 

 the Chowan water that runs beneath 

 his shoreside plant. 



"Herring are just like you and me," 

 he says. "If we're traveling, we'd rather 

 stay at a clean place than a dirty one." 



But once the herring return to the 

 ocean, they have faced another prob- 

 lem: fishing pressure created by fleets 

 of huge factory ships capable of net- 

 ting and processing enormous catches. 

 Foreign fleets scooped up tons of the 

 fish during the late 1960s and early 

 70s. 



Fishery managers blamed these 

 factory ships for the initial, sharp 

 decreases in North Carolina landings 

 later in the decade. Seeing the effects 

 of the high sea heists, state and fed- 

 eral managers restricted offshore 

 fishing. 



But by then the damage was done. 



Perry-Wynns' vats no longer 

 brimmed with pickled and salted 

 herring. The days of million-pound 

 processing were gone. Now Wynns 

 counts himself lucky to cut and salt a 

 million pounds of the bony fish in a 

 whole season. 



With the drop in available fish also 

 has come a decline in consumer de- 

 mand, Wynns says. 



Herring costs too much now to be the 

 poor man's fish that once fed the 

 multitudes of eastern North Carolina. 

 And, with the push for healthier, 

 quick-fix foods, people no longer 

 hunger so much for herring slow-fried 

 to a crispy brown. 



Workers process imported 

 Canadian herring at the Perry- 

 Wynns Fishery in Colerain. 



So, what does tomorrow hold for the 

 herring fishery? 



An upstream battle. 



Between fishing pressures and poor 

 water quality, it may just be a matter 

 of "whether the herring can hang 

 on," Manooch says. 



Murray Nixon shakes his head 

 sadly. "The fish just keep going 

 away' ' he says in a gravelly voice. 

 "And people ain't going to eat herring 

 anymore anyway. There's too many 

 bones, and they don't have time to fix 

 'em." 



But the bony fish don't stick in 

 Nixon's craw. "I love to eat 'em, love 

 to smell 'em and love to work in 'em," 

 he says. ■ 



