THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090404
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
DATELINE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
Commercial fisherman Terry Pratt of Merry Hill took a boat ride up the Roanoke River last week through uncounted numbers of bloated dead fish clogging the waterway.
To Pratt, whose livelihood depends on fish that spend part of their lives in the region's rivers, last month's fish kills are a sign that fishermen and fisheries managers need to do more to protect the state's coastal water quality and fisheries habitat.
Pratt is chairman of a new committee of commercial fishermen charged with exploring ways the industry can get more involved in water quality issues - it's just one of several groups that are coming to grips with the issue.
And he is one of dozens of fishermen worried that the fall striped bass fishing season will be canceled this year because the Roanoke River fish kill has decimated the equivalent of the Albemarle Sound Management Area's fall quota.
Twila Nelson, president of the Carteret County Chapter of the state Fisheries Association Auxiliaries, said it's time people realized that deteriorating water quality and habitat destruction often play a larger role in the decline of fisheries stocks than overfishing does.
``The fishermen have been the scapegoat when they have not been the total problem all along,'' she said after a recent meeting of commercial fishermen and state fisheries officials near her home in Harkers Island. ``They've just been the most visible presence.''
This summer, abnormally heavy rains and high temperatures have led to low oxygen concentrations in waterways all along the mid- and northeastern coast. And natural conditions in many coastal waterways have been aggravated by manmade problems.
In June, July and early August, breaks in animal waste lagoons sent untreated waste flowing into the New River and other coastal waterways. And flow reductions by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Virginia Power Co. may have contributed to dissolved oxygen problems on the Roanoke River.
A fish kill on the Neuse River, not far from New Bern, decimated about half a million fish in late July and was thought to be caused, in part, by phosphorous and nitrogen-laden runoff from nearby farms.
Concern over these events has united commercial fishermen, sports fishing groups and fisheries regulators - three groups who are often at odds over how to best protect the state's coastal fishing stocks - over the need for a greater role for the Division of Marine Fisheries in protecting water quality and habitat.
At a recent meeting of about 40 commercial fishermen and their families in the Carteret County fishing community of Smyrna, water quality and habitat protection was one of the issued most often discussed by fishermen and fisheries officials.
``Do you know what role marine fisheries played in all these fill kills?'' Marine Fisheries Commission Chairman Robert V. Lucas asked the group. ``We counted the dead fish.
``The issue is, should the Marine Fisheries Commission be able to have the authority to deal with issues of protecting habitat?'' asked Lucas, who is also chairman of the state's fisheries Moratorium Study Committee, a 19-member committee studying fisheries management issues. ``Should the Marine Fisheries have the authority to deal with water quality?
``The law has got to be changed,'' he told the fishermen. ``Until you give the Marine Fisheries Commission the authority to deal with water quality issues, you're not going to solve the problems facing fisheries today. And in some fisheries, it's the Number One problem.''
Increasingly in recent weeks, sports and commercial fishermen and policymakers from all along the coast, who are measuring the effects of the recent hog spills and fish kills on area fishermen and their livelihoods, agree.
Bradley Styron, owner of Cedar Island's Quality Seafood, was one several fishermen at the Smyrna meeting who demanded a greater role for fishermen in water quality and habitat issues.
``The biggest problem we've got, whether you believe it or not, is water quality,'' he said. ``If you take care of water quality, you're going to take care of the problems with the resource.''
Meanwhile in Beaufort County, on the banks of the Pamlico River, Etles Henries Jr., an owner of Carolina Seafood, said government agencies charged with protecting the coastal environment should cooperate more and increase the role of fisheries regulators in environmental questions.
``There has to be some massive changes,'' he said.
One first step, according to Jerry Schill, executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association, a commercial fishing trade group, would be increased cooperation among the boards and agencies that oversee coastal environment issues.
Charles Manooch, chairman of one of two Moratorium Steering Committee subcommittees studying the jurisdiction of the fisheries commission, said the answer probably lies in one or two changes in state statutes.
One of his committee's proposals would expand the division's authority to comment on some types of development and discharge permits to include either an appeal or a veto for fisheries officials.
Another proposal would expand the fisheries division and the commission's authority over issues such as outstanding resource waters and primary nursery areas and would create a new water quality classification - finfish waters - to expand protection offered to some some waterways.
``There is definitely a great desire with all the problems we're seeing in North Carolina to see more authority here,'' Manooch said. ``It seems there could be more done.''
Manooch will discuss his subcommittee's recommendations at a Moratorium Steering Committee meeting on Thursday in Wilmington. by CNB