'They routinely spot and report incidents of pollution. 7 hey experience the waters, often taking note of changes that are 

 too subtle and require too many observations for anyone but fishers to notice. They tickle the bottom with crab pots, 



assess the condition of sea grasses snarled in 



their nets, witness in the debiis of their catch the 



litter of tourists and the natural trends of 



biological diversity. ' 



"THE ESTUARY'S GIFT" 



Men checking a pound net, Colerain, NC. c. 1939. 

 Courtesy of the NC Division of Archives and History 



And it splits the workload. "My 

 strengths are analytical. His strengths are 

 in writing. We work together," Johnson 

 says. In fact, an ECU publication profiled 

 the pair as a "dynamic duo," with Johnson 

 as the outspoken numbers cruncher and 

 Griffith as the quieter wordsmith. 



Since their first project together, all 

 of their collaborative efforts have included 

 an outreach or extension component. "We 

 are trying to change something for the 

 better," Johnson says. 



Murray recalls Griffith going out of 

 his way to participate in public forums or 

 to make public presentations of findings. 

 "David very much understands the value 

 of extension," he adds. 



Johnson and Griffith continue to 

 collaborate - including a new two-year 

 Sea Grant project that will document the 

 technical environmental knowledge held 

 by commercial fishers and others in the 

 seafood industries. "They monitor the 

 resource for us," explains Griffith, 



repeating a theme that runs throughout 

 The Estuary 's Gift: 



"Because fishers move from one 

 territory to another to fish, shift from crab 

 pots to shrimp trawls or from gill nets to 

 clam rakes, because they land croaker 

 during one season and mullet or blue 

 crabs during another, they are the group 

 of people best situated to monitor the 

 health of coastal rivers, sounds, ocean 

 waters and estuaries. They routinely spot 

 and report incidents of pollution. They 

 experience the waters, often taking note 

 of changes that are too subtle and require 

 too many observations for anyone but 

 fishers to notice. They tickle the bottom 

 with crab pots, assess the condition of sea 

 grasses snarled in their nets, witness in 

 the debris of their catch the litter of 

 tourists and the natural trends of biologi- 

 cal diversity." 



For example, Griffith tells the story 

 of a scallop fisher he calls Davis Evans, 

 who hails from the Bogue Banks in 



Carteret County. Evans and his father-in- 

 law bring in the catch one day, then spend 

 the next day shucking alongside family 

 and neighbors. It is Evans who takes 

 Griffith out for a day of scalloping and 

 jokes to other fishers that he has a 

 revenue man aboard. 



"Each time Davis pulled the net into 

 his skiff, he examined its contents. More 

 than once he showed me small organisms 

 that resembled insect larvae and com- 

 mented that they were more or less 

 plentiful than they had been in past 

 seasons. To me, they all looked the 

 same," Griffith writes. 



And the fishers themselves feel a 

 part of the ecosystem, as one Stumpy 

 Point fisher explains. "I'm 63 years old. 

 I can't hardly remember when I wasn't 

 fishing. I'm as much a part of this sound 

 as the things that live in it." 



Griffith writes of the close ties 

 between coastal communities and the sea 

 Continued 



COASTWATCH 13 



