enny McCuiston lives in North Carolina 

 and trawls for shrimp in North Carolina — his 

 24-foot Diamond boat, "DrawPlay" was even 

 built in North Carolina. 



"There's not many people left like me," 

 says McCuiston, a Wrightsville Beach resident. 

 For more than 30 years, he has trawled the inside 

 waters of the state's southeastern coast. 



But some area residents and policymakers 

 believe trawling in the region's narrow 

 waterways unintentionally captures and kills 

 large amounts of commercially valuable fish and 



Logothetis designed the project to examine 

 bycatch generated by the trawling patterns of 

 an actual commercial shrimper — in this case, 

 McCuiston. 



"Bycatch is the issue in the shrimp 

 industry," he says. 



The issue made headlines in 2003 when 

 state Rep. Bonner Stiller, a Republican from 

 Brunswick County, introduced legislation to ban 

 all shrimp trawling in the Intracoastal Waterway 

 (ICW) in Brunswick and New Hanover counties. 

 A contentious public debate erupted, revealing a 



invertebrates, known as "bycatch." 



In March, an N.C. Division of Marine 

 Fisheries (DMF) meeting in Bolivia to discuss 

 the possibility of closing areas of Brunswick 

 County to shrimping was packed with 

 concerned shrimpers and area residents. 



"The concerns with inshore shrimping 

 mostly have to do with commercially and 

 recreationally valuable finfish, primarily croaker, 

 spot, gray trout — such as weakfish — and 

 flounder," says Elaine Logothetis, a biologist 

 from Wilmington. 



Some fear that if large numbers of these 

 species end up as bycatch, their populations will 

 decline and hurt the state's other fisheries, she 

 explains. 



In 2004, Logothetis and McCuiston 

 received an N.C. Fishery Resource Grant (FRG) 

 to assess the bycatch generated in the state's 

 southeastern shrimp fisheries. The FRG program 

 is funded by the North Carolina General 

 Assembly and administered by North Carolina 

 Sea Grant. 



lack of scientific data on area bycatch. 



"There has always been a question as to 

 the magnitude of the bycatch generated by small 

 commercial operations in the southern parts of 

 the state," notes Rich Carpenter, DMF Southern 

 District manager. 



The bill eventually was withdrawn, but the 

 controversy continued to simmer, prompting the 

 DMF to speed up development of a statewide 

 Shrimp Fishery Management Plan. 



Data from Logothetis and McCuiston 's 

 research has proved invaluable to the plan's 

 development, adds Scott Baker, a Sea Grant 

 fisheries specialist based in Wilmington. 



"Until this study, we had to refer to studies 

 in other areas that may or may not have been 

 applicable to these situations," observes Baker. 



EXAMINING THE QUESTION 



Although McCuiston is a commercial 

 shrimper, Logothetis is quick to point out they 

 aren't taking sides. 



"We are here to examine the question: 



