Different water areas are much more 

 likely to be recognized and zoned in 

 Washington's water-use strategy. Under 

 the Washington state constitution, harbor 

 areas are to be delineated and reserved for 

 navigation and commerce. The planning 

 department for the city of Bainbridge Island 

 recently implemented a harbor manage- 

 ment plan that encompasses the island's 

 four major harbors, listing objectives for 

 each harbor and specific policies to meet 

 those objectives. And in San Juan County, 

 comprised of 400 islands and the surround- 

 ing 440 square miles of marine waters, the 

 local government has just become the first 

 in the country to ban the use of PWC 

 altogether, except for through traffic and 

 emergencies. 



North Carolina's Future 



Today, North Carolina's plans for 

 reducing conflict in our waters include 

 neither an educational strategy like 

 Virginia's nor a planning scheme as 

 complex and powerful as Washington's. 

 The level of conflict doesn't warrant a 

 comprehensive plan at this point, says 

 Clark, but the conflicts are intensifying. 

 Landowners along the shore want riparian 

 access to deeper waters and the right to 

 build docks and piers, which can interfere 

 with the public's desire to use the same 

 water for water-skiing or fishing. Shellfish 

 leases granted by the state compete with 

 recreational and commercial fishers who 

 gather clams and oysters from wild beds. 



Right now, the state has an opportu- 

 nity to think ahead on the issue of water-use 

 planning. Michael Orbach, the director of 

 Duke University Marine Laboratory, has 

 teamed up with the N.C. Division of 

 Marine Fisheries (DMF) to map the human 

 uses of Core Sound, a site of particular 

 contention between shellfish lease owners 

 and other fishers. 



Though the state owns the public trust 

 waters and the lands lying underneath 

 them, it leases bottom plots to individuals 

 who want to culture shellfish there. In 

 recent years, the shellfish lease program has 

 been expanded to include the water column 

 above the shellfish bed, so that aquacultur- 

 ists can use more profitable off-bottom 



Crowded shores like this one call attention to the multiple uses of our coastal waters. 



racks and cages for growing clams or 

 oysters. 



"This is controversial because the state 

 is granting exclusive rights to public trust 

 property," says Orbach. "Wild shellfish 

 gatherers feel that shellfish leases compete 

 with them for space, markets and prices." 



Two years ago, the conflict over 

 shellfish leases in Core Sound became so 

 hostile that the state legislature put a 

 moratorium on new leases in the area. That 

 moratorium has now been extended to July 

 1 and may be extended for yet another year. 



While the DMF decided to map the 

 shellfish resources in Core Sound in an 

 effort to find solutions to the problem, 

 Orbach thought the conflict represented a 

 human-use conflict more than a conflict 

 over resources. He applied for a grant from 

 the division to expand their project to 

 include a map of human uses of Core 

 Sound. From the results of the mapping 

 projects, Orbach hopes to develop a user- 

 coordination plan for the sound that would 

 prevent conflict between various user 

 groups. 



In many ways, Orbach' s study mirrors 

 Clark's plan for Carteret County: "Walter's 

 project provided some of the ideas that 

 spawned this project," says Orbach. 

 Researchers have surveyed the historical 

 and contemporary uses of Core Sound, and 

 last summer they surveyed recreational and 

 commercial fishers on their uses of the 

 water and their attitudes toward other users. 

 The resulting data is being plotted into GIS 

 maps for comparison with the data from 

 DMF's Shellfish Mapping Program. 



"Right now, Fisheries is finishing with 

 their part on shellfish resources," Orbach 

 says. He hopes the project will be com- 



pleted by late June, when the DMF will 

 present a final report to the N.C. General 

 Assembly. It will be up to the state to 

 decide how to act on the report; its decision 

 could mark a major first step in North 

 Carolina's development of water-use 

 planning strategy. 



"Currently, there's an indefinite 

 moratorium (on new shellfish leases) on 

 the east side of the sound and a temporary 

 moratorium on the west side," Orbach 

 says. "The legislature could take the whole 

 moratorium off .... put a cap on the 

 percentage of the bottom available for 

 leases, restrict leases to certain locations or 

 kick the issue back to the Division of 

 Marine Fisheries to develop rules for 

 shellfish leases under specific guidelines." 

 Such guidelines might include promoting 

 aquaculture, protecting commercial and 

 recreational fish harvests, and preventing 

 conflict between users. 



Traditionally, North Carolinians 

 haven't seen the water as something that 

 needs to be zoned. The state's waters are 

 plentiful and bountiful; it's hard to imagine 

 a time when the water will be too crowded, 

 noisy or polluted to enjoy. Still, that time 

 may be fast approaching. Thousands more 

 visitors flock to North Carolina's shores 

 every year, and increased tourism means 

 more people sunning on our beaches, 

 swimming in our sounds and boating in 

 our ocean waters. 



"We have so much in North Carolina: 

 our sounds, our coastal rivers," says Clark. 

 "Until recently, we didn't have a lot of 

 people using them. Basic rules and 

 regulations used to be enough to keep 

 people from bumping into each other. But 

 now we need structure." □ 



COASTWATCH 19 



