THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 17, 1996 TAG: 9604170414
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
Hoping to get more rewards for inventiveness to people who work on the water, members of North Carolina's Seafood and Aquaculture Committee voted Tuesday to take the $1 million grant program away from the state's Division of Marine Fisheries.
If legislators pass the bill during their short session next month, the Fisheries Resourse Grant Program would be administered by North Carolina Sea Grant for 1997.
Sea Grant employees would receive all grant applications and send them to out-of-state experts for evaluation. Sea Grant officials then would recommend which proposals should receive funding and submit those suggestions to the state's Marine Fisheries Commission. Members of the commission would continue to have the final vote about which grant projects get money.
For the past two years, workers in the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries have overseen the grant program.
``I think it's a good idea for Sea Grant to take over its administration. I'd have voted the same way if I had a vote,'' state Marine Fisheries Commission Chairman Robert V. Lucas said Tuesday. ``Sea Grant is probably better equipped to handle this type of thing. I think it's for the best. And I hope it goes through.''
When North Carolina Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, set up the fisheries grant program, he said he wanted the money to go to watermen and recreational anglers so they could study ways to improve marine resources for everyone. In March, however, the Marine Fisheries Commission allocated most of the $1 million to academic researchers. Little of the money went to fishermen.
``At least 75 percent of the money should go to fishermen,'' Sea Grant Director B.J. Copeland said Tuesday from his Raleigh office. ``Then, those fishermen could hire academics to help them do the research.''
North Carolina Fisheries Association Director Jerry Schill, who represents hundreds of commercial fishermen and seafood processors throughout the state, said he hopes the legislature turns the grant process over to Sea Grant. ``It's a good program - if it's done right,'' Schill said Tuesday from Raleigh. ``I think it will help to have Sea Grant oversee it because B.J. is very cognitive toward the legislative intent of the resource grants - unlike the Marine Fisheries Commission.''
A subsidiary of a national network of college programs supported by funds from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, North Carolina Sea Grant is based at North Carolina State Universtiy and is set up to help fishermen and fisheries resources.
In 1994, Sea Grant representatives helped to conduct workshops to help fishermen apply for grants. This year, however, a member of the Marine Fisheries Commission's Grant Selection Committee told Copeland not to conduct any workshops. Watermen had to write their own grant proposals. And their ideas and applications had to compete against those submitted by academic professors, biologists and even a national biological research group.
``If we get to administer the grant program, we'll have four workshops across the coast to help fishermen write their proposals,'' Copeland promised. ``We intend to start the entire process in July instead of waiting until just before the deadline in January. And we'll make sure at least one reviewer on every proposal is a fisherman.
``We'll also go outside the state to get the grant applications evaluated to eliminate any possible conflicts of interest.''
According to the draft bill which legislative committee members voted on Tuesday, fisheries grants would go toward:
Developing new fisheries equipment or gear.
Conducting environmental pilot studies, including water quality and fisheries habitat.
Undertaking aquaculture projects.
Developing new seafood technology.
The Marine Fisheries Commission ``shall, in cooperation with fishermen, the Division of Marine Fisheries and the Sea Grant College Program, establish priorities effective July 1 of each year for the grant program,'' the draft bill says. ``The commission shall determine funding based on the priority rankings'' of the reviews conducted by Sea Grant employees - or experts to whom they send the applications for evaluation.
Lucas said turning the grant program over to Sea Grant should ``really help the fishermen a lot. The commission - and employees with the Division of Marine Fisheries - will have more time to work with the fishermen and advise them about what areas we feel like we need research in.''
Copeland said he hopes to get the chance to administer the $1 million grant program. ``If mbers of the Marine Fisheries Commission] leave us alone, we can do a really good job with it,'' said Copeland.
``I think the fishermen will be pleased - and it will work out fine.''
In other fisheries news Tuesday, an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department filed an appeal to a federal case regarding commercial weakfish harvests in offshore areas of the Atlantic Ocean.
The North Carolina Fisheries Association filed suit against the U.S. Commerce Department last fall - and the state's Division of Marine Fisheries signed on, in part, to the suit. The suit challenged a complete closure of federal waters to commercial catches of weakfish. A Norfolk judge ruled in favor of the fishermen and re-opened Atlantic waters to weakfish harvests in February.
The appeal does not affect watermen's ability to catch weakfish - also known as gray trout. Federal officials have 60 days to file a brief on their appeal. by CNB