THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502050035
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 326 lines
Frost crystals clung to the boat's bow as Lewis Beasley and Phil Haywood began hauling in their net. The Outer Banks watermen worked nearly an hour untangling sea grass and corroded crab pots from the nylon mesh. When their bare fingers went numb, they slapped their chapped, swollen hands against the wooden rails.
Finally, the green-gray water seemed to boil.
About 60 striped bass were writhing in the 700-yard seine set in North Carolina's Albemarle Sound. A catfish, two red fin and three red drum wriggled and splashed. The watermen caught about 200 pounds of 22- to 28-inch fish.
Their haul would have netted more than $150 at the docks. Beasley could have made the monthly payment for his teenage daughter'sbraces. Haywood could have paid his electric bill.
But the fishermen had to dump their profits overboard.
North Carolina laws have made it illegal for commercial watermen to catch striped bass in the Albemarle Sound since Dec. 9. Virginia fishermen haven't been allowed to net Chesapeake Bay stripers since Dec. 31. State regulators won't predict when the seasons might reopen.
In the Atlantic Ocean, North Carolina watermen have been permitted to keep striped bass since Jan. 23. Catches are limited to five fish per boat per day. When 96,000 pounds are caught off the North Carolina coast, the season will be closed until fall.
Commercial fishermen along the Atlantic shores say they're drowning in a sea of red tape.
About 20 years ago, fisheries managers began noticing declines in some of the East Coast fish stocks. Biologists, environmentalists and recreational fishermen have blamed much of the population decline on commercial watermen.
By using large nets and increasingly efficient gear and not thinking about the future, commercial fishermen caught so many fish that the once-abundant natural resource may never recover, experts say.
Those views - and the resulting legislation that government officials imposed - have been widely reported. Watermen admit that some of their flock have been overzealous at times in harvesting methods. Now, the commercial fishermen say they are ready to help save some fish - and the future of their own ancient profession.
Woes of North Carolina's watermen echo across the East Coast. From Maine to Miami, commercial fishermen whose families have survived off the seas for centuries are starting to bail out of the industry. Those who remain say their incomes are quickly drying up.
``It's a mess we've got,'' said Wesley ``Red'' McDonald, a Chesapeake Bay and ocean commercial fisherman in Virginia. McDonald helps run the Chincoteague Island Fishermen's Cooperative. Until this year, he spent his winters fishing for striped bass.
``We've got the same problem here in Virginia as they got in North Carolina,'' McDonald said.``There's plenty of fish up here. But we can't catch or keep 'em. Everybody's had a real hard winter up here. They got so many laws and restrictions, it's hurt everybody on the island.''
``We've been spanked thoroughly and we've learned our lesson as an industry,'' said Bobby Jones, a North Carolina waterman from Perquimans County. ``We know that fish stocks need to survive for commercial fishing to continue. Now, we need the opportunity to have some control over the fish stocks - and over our own destiny.''
``There's plenty of fish out there. They just won't let us catch them,'' said Lewis Beasely, a 42-year-old Colington Island native whose family has survived on commercial fishing for six generations. ``It's rotten, really. We want to work. But they won't let us earn a living no more.
``We have to sit here and watch our mortgage payment, our phone bill, our grocery money swimming away,'' Beasley said, leaning over the 24-foot boat's side as he let the fish go. ``Last week, I caught 20 pounds of catfish that sell for 15 cents a pound - and had to throw back the 280 pounds of striped bass that sell for $1 or more a pound. It's killing us. If something doesn't change soon, we're gonna lose everything.''
Haywood agreed. A grade-school chum of Beasley, his ancestors have depended on commercial fishing for more than two centuries. Now, Haywood is trying to convince his 20-year-old son not to pursue the family profession. He believes the industry on which many coastal communities were founded is becoming extinct.
``We feel just like the Indians: Government is pushing us out of our homeland, killing off our heritage,'' Haywood said. ``We've been four months without a paycheck. They finally opened the ocean up and then said we could only keep five fish a rig. With four guys aboard, that's about a fish each a day. I can't feed my dog on that, much less my young 'uns. We can't even catch enough to eat ourselves any more.
``We can make a week's work easy - and there'd still be plenty of fish out there. But those regulators think the fish are more important than the fishermen. Something's gonna have to happen soon,'' Haywood said, ``or we're all gonna starve.''
A dozen watermen sitting around the docks at Colington's A & B Seafood shook their heads sadly in agreement. ``The people who make all these rules just don't seem to care what happens to the commercial fishermen or their families,'' said Junnie Beasley, Lewis' 64-year-old father who lives in a trailer beside the family's Colington Island fish house. TANGLED UP IN RULES
According to watermen's organizations across the Albemarle area, more than 1,000 families in northeastern North Carolina depend on commercial fishing for their primary income. Those numbers increase by thousands along the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Seaboard. Millions of people across the country rely on commercial catches for food.
Until the mid-1970s, watermen could fish fairly freely in inland and coastal waters in the East. Then, biologists began reporting decreases in certain fish stocks. State and federal regulators started slapping season, size and catch restrictions on certain species to help preserve them.
Striped bass, or rockfish as locals call them, are prevalent from Massachusetts through North Carolina. In Virginia and around North Carolina's Outer Banks, the fish school from August until June. Their sale provided most winter income for area commercial fishermen.
In 1984, North Carolina fishery officials instituted the first limited commercial season for striped bass. Watermen were only allowed to catch rockfish from October through May in the Albemarle Sound. In the Atlantic Ocean, harvest was prohibited. Similar restrictions were adopted in other states.
North Carolina regulators reopened the ocean season for commercial catches in 1990. Since then, other rockfish restrictions have become increasingly stringent. A decade's worth of North Carolina rules on striped bass fills more than 30 typed pages. Separate laws apply to the ocean, sounds, rivers, commercial and recreational fishermen. Different size restrictions and catch limits are placed on each area and type of gear. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission sets an individual quota for each state. State officials designate seasons and days that watermen may work.
Rules change daily, without warning. Seasons close on a moment's notice. Watermen don't know when or if they will be able to go back to work. Officials admit that striped bass populations have improved dramatically since the early 1980s. But in an attempt to preserve the stock, biologists have been slow to loosen laws governing what commercial fishermen can catch.
People who made $300 a day netting striped bass 10 years ago now say they can't earn more than $30 a week. Some watermen's wives are threatening to walk out if their husbands don't start bringing money home soon. Banks are turning down loan applications from most commercial fishing families. And Social Services officials are telling fishermen that they have to get rid of their assets - their boats and gear - before they can qualify for public assistance.
If they sell their equipment, the watermen won't be able to return to work. If they don't, some fear their families will go hungry. In the Albemarle area, most commercial fishermen are self-employed, with no insurance or retirement, little savings, and annual incomes ranging from $12,000 to $40,000.
``These guys can't take other work because they don't know when they might be able to go out again. If the season opens quick and they can't go then, they miss it. No one ever decides what's going on in time for us to plan,'' said Lewis Beasley's wife, Jane.
``They've each got $20,000 or more invested in gear they can't use. Lewis had to sell a boat the other day to take our daughter to the hospital. It's hard to sell the stuff, too, because most of it's becoming illegal to fish with.
``I don't want welfare,'' Jane Beasley said. ``I work hard as a restaurant cook. Lewis wants to work, too. But he can't. I want my children to be proud of me and their father. We've both worked hard - always. But that can't get you nowhere no more.''
Along the Atlantic coast, watermen are singing the same song. They don't want to give up their independence or their heritage. But they can't afford to earn a living at it any more. State restrictions are strangling the domestic fish market. Foreign fish are flooding local markets.
``By precluding us from a lot of the fishing efforts, state regulators have contributed to the economic decline of the entire Albemarle area,'' Merry Hill, N.C., fisherman Terry Pratt said last week. Pratt is president of the Albemarle Area Fisheries Association, which has about 200 members. He and 18 local watermen met at Quality Seafood in Elizabeth City to discuss solutions for their slowly sinking industry.
``Striped bass are a good example of the effects the regulatory process has on people,'' Pratt said. ``Government regulators used inconsistent data, unreliable numbers and computer-generated models to shut us down. Striped bass are an available, renewable resource. But they are being wasted - and we're all suffering.''
North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries biologist Mike Street helped formulate the state's first striped bass rules. Early regulations were aimed at decreasing large hauls of spawning fish and eliminating trawl gear from the sounds, he said. Later efforts became much more stringent.
``Striped bass catch quotas began in 1990, and were approved by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission for each state,'' Street said from his office in Morehead City.
``They were based on the idea that each state would reduce its 1979 striped bass landings by 80 percent. We knew that commercial fishermen caught 90 percent of all striped bass in the state. But we had very poor data from the recreational fishing side. So when quotas were divided up, the commercial fishermen had to split the total in half with the recreational group.
``Commercial fishermen really have given up an awful lot.''
Virginia Marine Resources Commission spokesman Rob O'Reilly agreed. ``The end of the '70s really was the heyday for striped bass,'' said O'Reilly, who serves as the state's assistant chief of fisheries management. ``Since then, there really haven't been enough fish for fishermen to get along on.
``It used to be that watermen relied on striped bass to get them through the tough times of the year. It really helped them when crabbing and other harvesting activities weren't available,'' O'Reilly said from his Newport News office. ``Right now, no one's been making their living on striped bass.''
Regulations on striped bass are bad omens for the future of commercial fishing, watermen said. Many believe that striped bass were targeted first because of their popularity with the recreational fishing community. Commercial fishermen who still try to earn incomes off the species contend they are being shut out of the industry so that others can catch the coveted rockfish for sport.
``There aren't any white perch left in the sound. And catfish are in great decline,'' Haywood said from his boat in the Albemarle Sound. ``But where are the regulations on those species? State regulators only care about striped bass because the recreational guys like them. There are enough of those fish out there for everyone.''
Street and other biologists say that overfishing by commercial fishermen caused part of the decline in striped bass stocks in the early 1980s. Pollution, dams slowing water flow on rivers, and other factors also hurt the species, Street said.
Commercial fishermen say fish naturally reproduce in cycles, with populations rising and falling every few years.
But the watermen feel they're being blamed - and made to suffer - for a fish-stock decline that they alone did not cause. State officials are putting restrictions on commercial fishermen, they say, instead of trying to clean up the waterways. Commercial fishermen have to follow hundreds of rules. But they don't believe they are being allowed to reap the profits of improved stocks.
If existing regulations are not dropped or amended soon, watermen say, the rules are only going to hurt striped bass and other species.
Waterman Scott Keefe of Windfall, N.C., said every fisherman he knows has lost 30 to 50 percent of his annual income in the last decade because of state regulations. Striped bass fishing requires different boats and nets than other forms of fishing. Watermen can't just switch between species without investing $5,000 to $20,000 in additional vessels or gear.
McDonald said similar problems are plaguing commercial fishermen on Virginia's Eastern Shore. ``They gave us 104 striped bass licenses for the bay for the whole year,'' he said. ``I can catch 104 of those fish in 30 minutes.''
Keefe said that because striped bass ``are back at higher levels now than they have been in four or five years, they need to let us catch them again not only so we can make a living - but so other species can survive. Right now, there are so many rockfish out there that they're eating everything else in sight. If we can't catch them now, there won't be anything left to catch this spring.''
A predatory fish that can grow to longer than 3 feet in the sounds, striped bass eat plankton, plants and smaller fish. During the eight-day commercial season in December, watermen say they saw bass with a dozen whole spot fish in their stomachs. Many fishermen say they slit open stripers that had 18 or more tiny crabs inside - and striped bass don't normally eat crabs.
``The blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay is suffering because all the large rockfish up there are eating them,'' Pratt said. ``Biologists don't look at effects of overpopulation on one species like that. They just keep blaming it all on overfishing.''
Even if the striped bass season opens again for the Albemarle Sound and Chesapeake Bay - which state officials predict could be in the next few weeks - Nixon said it will be increasingly difficult to findi buyers for the fish. Watermen can only supply striped bass for a week or so at a time. They can hardly establish a market during that short period.
``Ten years ago, my dad employed 100 full-time commercial fishermen at his Edenton fish house,'' Nixon said. ``The volume of our sales has grown since then. But today, we only have two full-time fishermen working for us. The local business just can't survive because of all the regulations that's been put on us. It's a shame when we have to go to other countries to buy seafood when we're swimming in it around here.''
Nixon's father bought about 90 percent of his fish from North Carolina watermen in 1950. None of the fish he sold were caught in foreign markets. Today, Nixon buys about 25 percent of his seafood from within the state. More than 15 percent of what he sells is imported from other countries. FISHING FOR SOLUTIONs
Watermen say they're willing to follow some rules in harvesting their stocks. They readily admit that, in order to preserve each species, some restrictions are necessary. But if rules aren't eased soon, they say, no one will be able to buy fish from East Coast commercial fishermen.
Across the Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle area, watermen say they're tired of going to meetings called by state and federal fisheries officials. Commercial fishermen don't feel that government rule-makers listen to the people who risk their lives on the water each day hauling fish. They think their elected officials have abandoned them.
``They've squeezed commercial fishermen out of the water so far that we have only a very small percentage of the votes left around here,'' Haywood said. ``We can't get no political power with that. We can't put anyone into office - so they don't help.''
Wanchese waterman Willie Etheridge III echoes such sentiments. He traveled to Washington last month to urge federal fisheries officials to ease up on the tightening regulations that keep commercial fishermen from earning a living. He hopes state leaders will drop out of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission so that North Carolina can control its own waters.
And he says he's disappointed that state legislators and local elected officials have not done more for their commercial fishing constituents.
``They've been been selling us down the creek for years now,'' Etheridge said from his family's fish house. ``They're forgetting the folk who helped put them in office. They're selling us out to the recreational fishermen and biologists.''
Jerry Schill, a spokesman for North Carolina's commercial fishermen, shares Etheridge's skepticism about bureaucratic response to real people's problems.
``We don't have advocates in government any more,'' Schill said in Elizabeth City. ``We have adversaries. But we're all going to have to work together.''
A Virginia lawmaker already has proposed dropping out of the regional body that regulates commercial fishing for the Atlantic States. Some watermen suggest that state regulators eliminate striped bass quotas - or at least increase the allowed amount of pounds substantially. Commercial fishermen agreed to continue abiding by size limits. But they don't like the way seasons are set.
``Right now, they let us catch the fish when they aren't even out there,'' Jones said. ``They need to know where these fish are coming from and who is harvesting them, when, to get their data. They need to rely on commercial fishermen, who are really out there, to give them real numbers - not on some computer model program that can't account for things like weather and cycles. If they're going to have a season at all, it should be when there's actually something out there to catch.''
Some environmentalists, biologists and lawmakers have suggested fish farms as a possible salvation for commercial fishermen. Aquaculture, they say, would provide watermen with jobs and help replenish dwindling stocks. But the fiercely independent commercial fishermen say they don't want to compromise their self-employment - or heritage - to become farmers for a government-sponsored environmental experiment.
``We're begging,'' said Carson Beasley, another of Junnie Beasley's sons, from the docks of his family's Colington Island fish house. ``We don't know what else we've got to do.''
Some watermen said the government should buy them out. Farmers get federal subsidies for not working the land, watermen said. Why can't watermen be paid to not work the sea?
``I don't know what they want us to do. Go on welfare? Because that's what it's coming to,'' said Chincoteague Island fisherman McDonald. ``If the government doesn't want us to work on the water, then they should buy us out completely. We could get rid of our boats and gear that way, and have money to invest in some other business.'' ILLUSTRATION: DREW WILSON/Staff color photos
Phil Haywood, an Outer Banks waterman, throws his haul of about 60
striped bass back into the Albemarble Sound.
Photo
DREW WILSON/Staff
Lewis Beasley, left, and Phil Haywood pull in their net holding
striped bass, which they must return to the Albemarle Sound. New
laws passed to boost stock make it illegal for commercial watermen
to catch the rockfish in the sound.
by CNB