Dockside, the new catch is squid 



G.R. "Moon" Tillett and his son, Billy Carl Tillett, two 

 Wanchese fishermen, know how to catch all the squid they 

 want. But the problem comes in finding a market for the 

 eight-armed mollusks. 



In the summer, the Tilletts net what they commonly call 

 "summer squid" or ///ex. In the winter, it's "winter squid" 

 or Loligo. Last summer was the first time the Tilletts had 

 fished specifically for squid. This winter they're catching 

 the cephalopods as a bycatch. 



Billy Carl Tillett captains the boat, the Linda Gayle, 

 while his father mans the telephones, negotiating the prices 

 their catch will bring. The Tilletts get an average of 20 cents 

 a pound for summer squid and 35 cents a pound for winter 

 squid. "They tell us they're using the summer squid for 

 bait," says Moon Tillett. "But I know those squid have 

 some food value." 



Last summer, Billy Carl Tillett netted anywhere from 

 7,000 to 60,000 pounds of squid in a two-day trip. His father 

 says their records show that between July and October they 

 caught over one million pounds of squid. "We had the best 

 fishing summer ever," says Billy Carl Tillett. "It was 

 profitable and showed us something else we could do. It was 

 better than trying to shrimp around here, where you make 

 just enough to keep your head above water." 



In 1981, North Carolina fishermen landed 278,290 

 pounds of squid in this state with a dockside value of 

 $91,652. In 1982, 135,935 pounds of squid were landed for a 

 dockside total of $43,884. Figures for the 1983 catch were 

 not available from the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, 

 but Moon Tillett estimates that Wanchese fishermen netted 

 between four million and five million pounds of the mollusks 

 last year. 



In a management plan approved in December 1983, the 

 Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council in cooperation 

 with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the New 

 England Fishery Management Council and the South 

 Atlantic Fishery Management Council, set the allowable 

 catch for the Loligo fishery at 44,000 metric tons and the 

 ///ex fishery at 30,000 metric tons. The allowable catch is 

 reassessed yearly and can be modified if biological cir- 

 cumstances warrant. 



Most North Carolina fishermen trawl for squid. Billy 

 Carl Tillett uses a fly net lined with a shrimp net. The wide- 

 mouth net herds the squid into the tailbag. The cost of out- 

 fitting their boat for squid was minimal since the Tilletts 

 already owned their nets. "We didn't want to sink money 

 into fishing for squid until we knew the fishery would pay 

 off," says Billy Carl Tillett. 



Kenny Daniels, who owns a neighboring fish company, 

 faced marketing problems when he entered the fishery a few 

 years earlier. In 1979 Daniels equipped one of his boats with 

 an onboard blast freezer. His crew froze the squid as soon as 

 it was caught and washed, just as the foreign fleets do. "We 

 had a beautiful product," Daniels says. "But we couldn't 

 get rid of it. We couldn't find a market for it." 



But Daniels is ready to try again. He plans to outfit two 

 more vessels with onboard freezers to complete a fleet of 

 three boats that will fish for squid this summer. Daniels 

 says he will do his own marketing, hoping to sell his frozen 

 product to a restaurant or supermarket chain. 



By freezing onboard, Daniels has eliminated one problem 

 that faces the Tilletts — spoilage. The Tilletts have no on- 

 board freezer so they must quickly ice their catch and head 

 for port. They've learned two days is the maximum time 

 they have at sea during hot summer days. During the 1983 

 summer when Oregon Inlet was unnavigable, the Tilletts 

 delivered their squid to a seafood distributor in Virginia. 

 This winter the inlet is open, and the Tilletts are bringing 

 their catch home to Wanchese. 



To locate schools of squid along the ocean floor, Billy Carl 

 Tillett uses a white-line depth recorder with a scope. But he 

 admits even fancy electronics don't always turn up a boun- 

 tiful catch. He would like to know more about the squid's 

 habits — how they're affected by weather and currents. 



In January, UNC Sea Grant and the South Atlantic 

 Fishery Development Foundation sponsored a workshop in 

 Manteo to help fishermen learn more about how to fish, 

 handle and market the mollusks. Gilbert Voss, a 

 teuthologist (a scientist who studies cephalopods) at the 

 University of Miami, told an audience of 30 fishermen that 

 there are four kinds of squid found along the North Carolina 

 coast — Loligo paelei, sometimes called the longfin or win- 

 ter squid; Doryteuthis plei or arrow squid; Lolliguncula 

 brevis or brief squid; and ///ex illecebrosus, called the 

 shortfin or summer squid. 



Warren Rathjen of the National Marine Fisheries Ser- 

 vice's Gloucester, Massachusetts office, says a fisherman's 

 past experience will be his most valuable tool in predicting 

 the location of squid during certain seasons of the year. 

 Continued on next page 



Photo by Kathy Hart 



Billy Carl Tillett on the Wanchese docks 



