operations can send their boats north to 

 scallop off New Jersey or to fish off 

 Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and even 

 Alaska. The Daniels operation falls 

 into this category, along with the 

 business owned by the Smith family in 

 Beaufort and Atlantic. 



The Luther Smith & Son Fish 

 House is owned by Billy Smith Sr., 

 and it runs seven boats 60 to 85 feet 

 long. The Daniels' Wanchese Fish Co. 

 owns 12 boats and operates facilities in 

 North Carolina, Virginia and Massa- 

 chusetts. Both families send boats 

 north to scallop. 



These differences among them 

 suggest that some fishermen — the 

 smaller ones especially — are more 

 vulnerable to changes in an industry 

 pitching on waves of change. 



"There was a time when change 

 was a welcome thing — better ways to 

 do things, more fisheries to get into," 

 Bahen says. "But by now, new 

 fisheries have been entered into. Not 

 that many options are available to them 

 anymore." 



The age-old fishing business is the 

 only trade many of them know. And 

 rather than change, some would prefer 

 to return to the old ways and simpler 

 days, back when their fathers and 

 grandfathers fished the North Carolina 

 coastline. Then, all a commercial 

 fisherman needed was a boat, gear and 

 willingness to sift the waters for his 

 livelihood. 



"A fisherman was able to go 

 fishing when he wanted to go and stay 

 home when he wanted to," Bahen says. 

 "He could have a lot of money in his 

 pocket one day and be broke the next. 

 There were a lot of fish and little or no 

 regulations." 



Today, fishermen are wrestling 

 with new restrictions on their gear and 

 their territory. They face affronts from 

 groups that question their impacts on 

 fish stocks and the environment. And 

 they reckon with water pollution and 

 habitat destruction caused by construc- 



tion and other human activities. 



Fishermen complain that their nets 

 are being unfairly singled out as the 

 cause for declining stocks when other 

 problems are contributing. If anything 

 is responsible for population dips, it's 

 water quality that has been compro- 

 mised by development and pollution, 

 they say. 



"We get blamed for overfishing," 

 Daniels says. "When people come 

 down on vacation to go fishing, they 

 don't see the fish, and they think 

 they've all been caught up by the nets. 

 And that's not the case." 



Industry leaders say that increas- 

 ingly, regulations are being slapped 

 onto fishermen through public pressure 



"Sometimes we catch the small 

 fish," he says. "We have to kill small 

 fish to get the big ones, but that's going 

 to happen. You're not going to change 

 that with all the gear that you modify. 

 You're still not going to completely 

 correct it." 



Even so, fishermen say, regulations 

 are necessary, and the fish stocks 

 should be protected. But the gear to 

 protect sea turtles, declared endangered 

 species by Congress, has created by far 

 the greatest flap in the commercial 

 fishing industry. 



On a brisk December day, Tillett 

 fidgets in the processing area of the fish 

 house with a turtle excluder device 

 (TED) that is required by law on his 



Billy Carl Tillett 



Joey Daniels 



and knee-jerk reactions to natural 

 fluctuations in stocks that are beyond 

 their control. 



The tide of public opinion is 

 against them, they say, and it's being 

 driven by perceptions rather than 

 actual problems. 



"One of the hardest things that I 

 have to deal with is the public claiming 

 to have as much right to the resource as 

 we do," Tillett says. "It's true; it's the 

 law of the land. But still, they don't 

 know what it's like. 



nets. Designed for shrimp trawls, the 

 TEDs are not yet optimal for the 

 flounder fishery and will probably cost 

 fishermen part of their catch, he says. 



This oval-shaped gadget is designed 

 to release a turtle trapped in the nets, 

 but it's the commercial fisherman's 

 biggest headache, Tillett says. Local 

 fishermen are also on edge about 

 requirements that they meet new 

 quotas, size limits and mesh sizes in 

 their flounder nets. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 17 



