Understanding 



Commercial 

 Fishing 



By Carla B. Burgess 



North Carolina watermen have 

 always been mavericks. Sure, they 

 share stories with each other about life 

 on the water, a new piece of gear that 

 has worked well, what's biting and 

 what's not. 



But for the most part, they've been 

 fiercely independent, solving their own 

 problems their own way. They've 

 chosen where to go, what to fish for, 

 how to catch it and when to call it a 

 day. Hard work was the key to a good 

 living; bad weather or bad luck was the 

 enemy apparent. 



During the past two decades, 

 however, North Carolina's commercial 

 fishermen have begun to see their grasp 

 on this age-old profession weakening. 

 New pressures have surfaced, and new 

 foes are staking their claim on the 

 ocean frontier. Some of these perceived 

 opponents have flesh-and-blood 

 personas — environmentalists, devel- 

 opers, sportfishermen. But many of the 

 enemies are faceless — declining water 

 quality, ebbing ecology and a bureau- 

 cracy that many fishermen neither 

 understand nor want to understand. 



Day after day, commercial fisher- 

 men feel they are being sucked into a 

 quagmire of regulations invented by a 

 government they perceive as unfeeling 

 and uncaring. And they don't really 

 know how to participate in the regula- 

 tory system that shapes their very 

 livelihood. 



For each hour at sea hauling in 

 shrimp, flounder and mackerel, 

 fishermen spend another two or more 

 doing paperwork — filling out permit 

 applications, making sure their vessels 

 meet current safety codes, filing 

 reports, staying abreast of proposed 

 policy changes and trying to get their 

 two cents worth into the management 

 process. 



"The fisherman is faced with a 

 wide variety of regulations coming 

 from a number of different sources, and 

 it's almost impossible to keep up with 



2 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993 



