THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 18, 1995 TAG: 9502180441
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MOREHEAD CITY LENGTH: Long : 157 lines
From early spring to late fall, Bruce L. Freeman usually begins each day with a fishing rod, casting the surf near his home on the New Jersey shore.
Every now and then, when the fishing is particularly good, Freeman is late for his job as a research scientist with the New Jersey Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife.
``When I'm not dealing with fisheries, I'm usually fishing,'' says the 54-year-old Freeman. ``And when I'm not fishing, I'm going out with fishermen.''
Last week, Freeman gave up his life on New Jersey's barrier islands and his 15-year career in that state to accept the job as director of North Carolina's Division of Marine Fisheries.
Freeman leaves a post that provided state civil service protection - a tenure, of sorts, for government employees. Instead, he will serve as North Carolina's fisheries director at the pleasure of the governor in a job that has been the target of much political pressure and infighting in recent years.
``What happens in North Carolina is going to determine what happens in the others states along the Atlantic Coast,'' Freeman said during a news conference in a cavernous fisheries airplane hangar near the division's Morehead City headquarters.
``This is where the action is,'' said the state's new fisheries director. ``This is where I want to be.
``The well-being of a job has to do with more than monetary compensation,'' Freeman said. ``It has to do with a sense of self-satisfaction. You have to kind of reach out and grab it when the opportunity comes.''
The seven-month search for a new director for the agency ended last Friday when North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. announced that Freeman would oversee the state's coastal fishing industry.
Since Hunt's announcement, Freeman had been unavailable for interviews. He and his wife, Diana, were registered under an alias at a New Bern motel to give the couple time, Freeman said, to look for a new home.
As director, Freeman will oversee the operations of the Division of Marine Fisheries.
He also is charged with carrying out the policies and regulations adopted by the state legislature and the Marine Fisheries Commission, whose 17 members represent the state's scientific, commercial and recreational fishing communities.
Freeman also will have the power to establish seasons, set size and catch limits on certain species and establish gear restrictions for many types of fish.
That authority has drawn fire from dissatisfied fishermen in recent years.
Freeman is no stranger to North Carolina.
He graduated from North Carolina State University in Raleigh in 1963 with a bachelor's degree in zoology and spent the summer of that year on Hatteras Island studying the state's bluefish population.
The Division of Marine Fisheries has been the center of controversy since former Director William T. Hogarth left his post July 1 to accept a position with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Washington, D.C.
Bob Jamieson, head of North Carolina's Division of Environment, Health and Natural Resources's regional office in Wilmington, has served as interim director of the fisheries division while department leaders conducted the nationwide search for Hogarth's successor.
Hogarth, 55, held the post of fisheries chief for eight years. During his last two years as director, Hogarth became a lightening rod for dissatisfaction with the division and with the population declines in many of the state's coastal species.
The state's program of enforcing fisheries regulations has come under attack this year by scientists, fishermen and former fisheries regulators who say the Division of Marine Fisheries enforcement section is unorganized and inefficient in enforcing coastal fisheries regulations.
Freeman said his greatest challenge as the division's new director will be to restore the public and the industry's faith in the state's fisheries division.
Building that trust, he said, depends largely on fisheries regulators listening to their constituents' concerns.
``That's going to make or break a director,'' Freeman said. ``If you don't have that trust, particularly from the industry, you're not going to be effective.''
He added, ``I usually approach that simply as listening. Most of the problems can be solved simply by listening to what people have to say.''
Marine fisheries leaders said Thursday one of Freeman's greatest challenges may be fending off the political pressure that helped undermine Hogarth.
Hunt has promised that the new director will be free to do what is best to replenish the state's dwindling fish stocks. The governor also pledged to help shield his new fisheries chief from political pressure.
State officials reiterated that promise Thursday. But they admitted that insulating Freeman from all political pressures won't be easy.
``Clearly, when we hired somebody from New Jersey, we didn't have politics in mind. . . . But it's a political environment in which we work,'' said Jonathan Howes, North Carolina's secretary of environmental health and natural resources.
Howes said he told Freeman to ``leave as best as you can the politics of it to me, to the assistant director, the chairman of the Marine Fisheries Commission and the governor.''
Bob Lucas, chairman of the Marine Fisheries Commission, said his group should deflect some of the political pressure away from the director by playing a more visible role in tough policy decisions.
With a new director ready to begin work, the marine fisheries policymakers said earlier this week that the state's next step should be to hire a deputy director to oversee the operations of the division staff, while the division director focuses time and attention on meeting with fishermen, legislators and other policy makers.
Past efforts to get state money to hire a deputy director for those day-to-day responsibilities have been largely ignored by state lawmakers in recent years. And while funds for a deputy director were not included in Hunt's budget for the department, Howes said Thursday that the division could be restructured to create a deputy director's post by reassigning current staff.
Some coastal lawmakers have said they plan to introduce appropriations bills to provide money for the deputy director position.
In New Jersey, part of Freeman's job was to referee disputes between recreational fishermen and their commercial counterparts.
``We have about the same population as you do here,'' Freeman said. ``But we have one-fifth of the space, so you take your problems, condense them by five, and there we are. The differences between commercial and recreational fishing in our state are as interesting as any you will find - and yet we're able, in many instances, to work together.''
Freeman will face similar challenges in North Carolina.
``There's no reason we can't work together without major conflicts,'' he said. The key is for commercial and recreational fishermen and fisheries regulators to emphasize areas of agreement, while working out areas of conflict, Freeman said.
``It's paramount, however, that we do work these out - because we will see growth. If demographic projections are correct, we'll see an additional one million people in North Carolina and the great majority of those will be on the coast,'' Freeman said.
``The problems we have now will be magnified.''
Freeman already is facing his first challenge nearly two weeks before he officially begins work in North Carolina.
A plan that would open some of the waters south of Cape Hatteras to the commercial fly net industry for several weeks during the winter has been rejected by the Weakfish Technical Committee of the Atlantic Marine Fisheries Commission.
Freeman will have to address that plan during his first few weeks on the job. MEMO: BRUCE L. FREEMAN
EDUCATION: Associate in Applied Science in forestry from Paul Smith
College of Arts and Sciences in New York; Bachelor's Degree in zoology
from N.C. State University in Raleigh; Master's Degree in fishery
science-oceanography from the University of Massachusetts.
EMPLOYMENT: Research scientist with the New Jersey Division of Fish,
Fame and Wildlife; responsible for planning, developing, coordinating
and carrying out fish and wildlife research programs, as well as
overseeing the fisheries program. Previously served as administrator of
New Jersey's marine fisheries program and previously worked with the
National Marine Fisheries Service where he was the principal author of a
management strategy for the United States Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery
and completed a survey of eastern United States fishing groups.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES: Represented the state on the New Jersey
Marine Fisheries Council, Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council and
the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
by CNB