OK, so now we're going to get an update on what's been going on at the General Assembly in Raleigh this session. But instead of focusing on the typical big bills like the budget, we're going to look at some fishy business lawmakers have been up to — literally. For more, I'm joined now by reporter Mary Helen Moore. She covers the general assembly for WFAE and other public media stations.
Marshall Terry: Surprisingly, one of the most contentious issues of this session was a proposed inshore shrimp trawling ban. It passed the Senate, but the House decided not to take it up. What is shrimp trawling, and why is it contentious in North Carolina?
Mary Helen Moore: So, shrimp trawling is how most shrimp gets caught. So what the boats do is they drag these giant cylinder-shaped nets behind the boat. They're weighted down so that a chain scrapes along the bottom of the sea floor and scares up all the little shrimp, and they get pulled into the net.
North Carolina is one of the last states that allows shrimp trawling in its inland water. So, the Pamlico Sound, the Albemarle Sound, the mouse of the rivers. The issue with trawling is when you drag that chain along the bottom, it doesn't just startle up the shrimp — it startles up everything that's on the bottom. So that includes lots of fish, lots of crabs. Anything that's in the water can get caught in those nets.
Terry: Why did the House not take up the bill, and could it come up again at some point?
Moore: I think it will absolutely be back at some point. But the reason the house didn't take it up this year is because, after this was introduced in the legislature, it was kind of slipped into another bill at the last minute. The shrimp community — the commercial fishermen community — mobilized. They hired lobbyists, and they came to Raleigh. Hundreds of people were hanging out, putting pressure on lawmakers, and they just knew they didn't have the votes. With all of that pressure there in your face.
Terry: And I thought this was an interesting example of the sway an industry can have on the General Assembly. I guess here in the Charlotte area, we don't think of the shrimp industry as a powerhouse, but they really are in some places out east, right?
Moore: Yeah, that's absolutely right. So the commercial fishing industry, even though it's been declining kind of since the nineties, they still harvest, I think it's been close to $80, $90 million a year, and that's just the money associated with the sale of the fish themselves.
Beyond that, there's the restaurants on the coast. There's all of the other economic things that rely on these communities, and I think that's why you saw so many people coming out here to Raleigh, because this is not just the commercial shrimpers that were going to be affected by this. It was entire communities on the coast.
Terry: Let's go from shrimp now to flounder and red snapper — folks who fish for those, got some good news, right?
Moore: Yeah, that's right. So this year, for the first time, southern flounder is going to be split 50-50 between commercial and recreational fishers. Flounder are a species that are considered overfished in North Carolina, meaning we need to kind of give them a break.
That means that for the past few years, fishing seasons have been very short, but the new 50-50 split lets recreational fishers have maybe a few weekends as opposed to one or two or zero days like they had last year. And then the red snapper season is starting this weekend. A lot of folks on the coast are really excited. They are a fun saltwater sport fish, and people are going to be coming from all over the East Coast to North Carolina to fish for those.
Terry: Now, did you expect to spend so much time on seafood this legislative session? It's like you have become our unofficial aquatic correspondent.
Moore: I did not expect this at all, but I am loving it because it's absolutely fascinating. It's our environment, it's our food supply, it's our economy. There are so many interesting issues wrapped up in fishing in North Carolina. We have this kind of competition — this war, some people call it — between our recreational and commercial fisheries. The commercial has been declining for years and years now, and the recreational has been increasing for years, and we're at a really interesting inflection point. So I'm hoping I get to stay on this beat.
