"In the United States, they'll knock 

 out a hundred million pounds of 

 seafood to save one turtle," Smith 

 says. "They're going to starve every 

 fisherman." 



The National Marine Fisheries 

 Service (NMFS) is the frequent target 

 of commercial fishermen's rage. 

 Daniels keeps a manila folder stuffed 

 with 50 proclamations — or new rules 

 — issued in 1992. And Smith com- 

 plains that an NMFS proclamation 

 didn't give fishermen enough time to 

 comply with a new 5 1/2-inch mesh- 

 size limit in their nets. He'd purchased 

 $4,000 worth of new webbing, but 

 couldn't get nets made in time for the 

 deadline. 



should take a cue from farmers who 

 leave their fields feral to rejuvenate. 

 Waters left untrawled or unfished 

 could allow the stocks to rebound. 

 But fishermen claim they're more in 

 tune with the resource — and the 

 reasons for keeping it well — than 

 they get credit for. 



Historically, the weather and the 

 marketplace have regulated the fishing 

 business. They would fish for what- 

 ever was out there, and when the fish 

 got cheap, they would move onto 

 something else, Daniels says. 



Nets were adapted to target 

 multiple catches during a trawl. Tillett 

 says fishermen learned to catch trout 

 off Wanchese in the early 1970s by 



n'M r VI c Jeanne tans 



Billy Smith Sr. 



For Tillett, Daniels and Smith, 

 regulations and paperwork are now 

 daily rigors as common as negotiating 

 fish prices. No longer on the boats, 

 they manage the business from sparse 

 offices steeped in the smells of fresh 

 seafood. Men in knee-high, rubber 

 boots thud in and out, unloading the 

 latest catch or biding their time until 

 the next trip out. 



Like farmers, commercial fisher- 

 men have adjusted their work habits 

 and equipment over the years to get 

 the greatest yield from nature. 



Some critics, however, say they 



Clint Willis 



fiddling with a flounder net. 



"Maybe we shouldn't have, but we 

 always tried to increase and do better," 

 he says. "Maybe having to increase 

 and do better sometimes was a way of 

 telling us we should have left well 

 enough alone and fished the way we 

 were." 



His boats forced in by stormy 

 forecasts, Tillett surveys the docks and 

 muses that perhaps fishermen believed 

 the fish were "thicker" than they 

 actually were. But the gear made them 

 think so, he says. 



Smith, however, holds the hard 



line in the debate over resources. 

 There are enough fish for commercial 

 and recreational fishermen, he says. 

 Though declines have been observed, 

 they're only a blip in the natural ebb 

 and flow of stock populations. Fish 

 were even scarcer during a dry spell 

 in the 1950s and 1960s, but they 

 rebounded, he says. 



"Anybody who's been around 30 

 or 40 years knows that fish disappear 

 and they come back," Smith says. 



But that message is difficult to sell 

 at a time when value is placed more 

 than ever on preservation and conser- 

 vation of natural resources. 



Tillett says he's frustrated at the 

 public's willingness to join the clamor 

 against fishermen. Organizing to 

 speak out and fight back is key, he 

 says. 



In Marshallberg, Willis helped 

 organize the Carteret County 

 Waterman's Association in 1985, but 

 it unraveled after seven years of 

 working to stave off new regulations. 

 At its peak, it had 250 members. 



The N.C. Fisheries Association 

 also speaks for commercial fisher- 

 men, but many are reluctant to join 

 because 75 percent of the members 

 are seafood dealers, says Daniels, 

 president of the association. Yet 75 

 percent of the problems it tackles are 

 the fisherman's, he says. 



Rather, fishing communities hope 

 to get some political mileage from the 

 budding auxiliaries of women who 

 have the spare time and the drive to 

 lobby lawmakers and policymakers. 

 Their message is about a jeopardized 

 way of life that supports many coastal 

 families and communities totally 

 dependent on fishing, Smith says. 



It's a message they expect to ring 

 true in hard economic times that have 

 placed a national emphasis on jobs. 



Also, Tillett says, commercial 

 fishermen should seek better repre- 

 sentation on the South Atlantic 

 Fishery Management Council, which 



18 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993 



