By Connie Leinbach
Hundreds of men and women who make their livelihood in commercial fishing converged on the North Carolina General Assembly Tuesday to protest House Bill 442, which would ban shrimp trawling.
“Shrimp Day” or “Shrimpgate” at the legislature included a truck caravan that continuously circled the legislative complex with horns loudly blaring for lawmakers to hear.
“As a longtime Raleigh resident, I can say I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, who was at the capitol building.
He said that the Legislature is expected to recess by the end of this month but what happens next to this bill is unknown.
Phillips said the latest information is that HB442 does not have support by the majority of House Republicans and a hearing on it likely will not happen before the Legislature goes on summer break at the end of June and may never see the light of day.
“Of course, we take nothing for granted in the capital city,” he said. “They may decide to vote on it Friday and be done with it.”
Ocracoke Seafood Company Manager Susie O’Neal was among those from Hyde County who traveled to Raleigh and Phillips interviewed her.
“I think they’re getting the point across,” O’Neal told Phillips about the truckers. “The idea that by ending shrimping you’re going to increase the number of fish for recreational fishermen is not true. They tried it in Florida, and it hasn’t worked.”
Eliminating shrimp trawling would be doing away with an industry that feeds people, she said.
“We are trying to feed people local sustainable protein that’s not chemically treated,” she said. “You can’t do better.”
House Bill 442 originally sought to expand the commercial and recreational fishing season for flounder and red snapper, which was widely praised.
But an amendment to prohibit shrimp trawling within a half mile of North Carolina’s coast was tacked on before the June 17 committee vote. Facing limited opposition in the Senate, the revised bill passed and which, if passed by the House would greatly curtail, if not put an end to the shrimping industry.
One lawmaker speaking at a Tuesday morning press conference in the Legislative Building said there are 294 shrimpers in the state, down from around 1,000 in the 1990s.
Several noted that shrimping is already heavily regulated and that about 85% of the delicate estuarian areas where fish breed have been closed off to shrimping.
John Mallette of the Southern Breeze Seafood Market in Jacksonville said North Carolina can’t be compared to other states.
“South Carolina has more mud flats and they can shrimp off the beach,” he said. “All we have (off the shore) here is rocks.”
Senator Bobby Hanig, who represents Currituck County, said “this crazy amendment came out of left field.”
He proposed several amendments to the bill but was shut down “by my own party,” he said.
“The Coastal Conservation Association and N.C. Wildlife Federation have been pushing against (shrimp trawling) for years,” he said. “Last week I was ashamed to be a member of North Carolina Legislature.”
The Coastal Conservation Association is a nonprofit organization made up of saltwater anglers and conservationists. They and the Wildlife Federation claim there’s overfishing and that trawling nets with rough, heavy chains that drag along to seafloor, causing damage and uprooting marine life.
But Ocracoke Island Fisherman Morty Gaskill has pointed out that as mandated by state law, multiple by-catch reduction devices, along with a turtle excluder device, are required on each shrimp trawl.
These measures alone have been shown to reduce by-catch by 40 to 70%.
“Additionally, a lot of the shrimpers I know have also stopped dragging at night and are towing smaller nets in order to further minimize bycatch.,” he said. “No shrimper wants to have to deal with bycatch as it slows them down and decreases their catch.”
Why the rush to add this amendment?
The General Assembly commissioned the North Carolina Collaboratory in 2022 to complete a report on the environmental impacts of coastal shrimp trawling, he said, which is expected to be released June 30 and that “the truth is going to come out.”
Further proposed legislation, HB 441, would pay shrimpers impacted by the trawling ban through Oct. 1, 2028.
Rep. Keith Kidwell of Chocowinity, who represents Hyde County, decried that notion.
“These people don’t want to live on welfare from the government,” he said. “They want to work.”
Maybe they should ban foreign countries shrimping and fishing off our coasts and not allowing ocean oil drilling, that is the problem.
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