THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, July 26, 1995               TAG: 9507260417
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   57 lines

OFFSHORE WEAKFISH FISHING ON THE LINE MOST OF THE CATCH IS AT STAKE IF NEW PLAN IS NOT ADOPTED.

North Carolina's fisheries director Bruce L. Freeman will ask his colleagues in Philadelphia Thursday to support the state's alternative to closing offshore waters to weakfish catches.

But as he prepared for the meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's Weakfish Management Board, Freeman was not optimistic.

``It's a situation where most of the states have no sympathy for North Carolina and they're looking for a quick fix,'' Freeman said from his Morehead City office. ``The state directors are going to be under pressure to do something.''

At stake is the bulk of the state's 3.4 million-pound weakfish catch, valued at $1.9 million in 1994, which is likely to be curtailed if the members of the Weakfish Management Board do not support North Carolina's proposal.

Federal fisheries regulators will ask the Weakfish Management Board to respond to plan to prohibit the catch of weakfish by recreational and commercial fishermen in the Atlantic Coast Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ. The plan is proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The EEZ is a conservation zone in the Atlantic Ocean off East Coast states from Maine to Florida.

The proposal also would bar fishermen plying EEZ waters from possessing weakfish, also known as gray trout, taken incidental to catches of other species of fish. It stipulates that such bycatch must be released to the water as soon as possible.

No date has been given for the closure, but federal regulators say if they close the EEZ to weakfish, they are likely to do so this fall.

Proponents of the closure say it offers the best possible conservation measure. It is easy to understand and enforce and is in the best long-term economic interests of both commercial and recreational fishermen.

But opponents of the closure, including most commercial fishermen, the state Marine Fisheries Commission and other state fisheries managers, say the federal government's proposal is based on out-dated data and doesn't give an ASMFC management plan already in place along the Atlantic Coast time to work. Others fear a ban on the weakfish catch in offshore waters may force a large number of commercial fishermen to North Carolina's inshore waters or its sounds and rivers.

Most fisheries managers from other Atlantic Coast states ``don't understand how the fishery operates in North Carolina,'' Freeman said. ``And because of that, it's going to be difficult convincing them that such an option is not going to reduce mortality.''

As an alternative to the proposed closure, North Carolina will ask that the federal government impose a coastwide 12-inch minimum size on weakfish caught up to 200 miles offshore along with appropriate net size restrictions, Freeman said. by CNB