THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 27, 1996 TAG: 9604270332
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NAGS HEAD LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
Menhaden fishermen can't understand why sports anglers don't want their big boats around area beaches.
The flat, toothless fish they net are oily, mealy and inedible. Only livestock eat processed portions of the menhaden meat. And many of the 6- to 8-inch fish are used as bait.
Officials in the menhaden industry say their fishing fleets don't catch prized trout, bluefish or any other species recreational anglers are interested in.
Some sports fishermen, however, don't buy that line.
Each time the menhaden mother ships slide along the shore, they say, other fish get scooped into the purse seines - or, at best, scatter from the piers and poles. The mere presence of the 170-foot boats is odious to many recreational anglers. And since tourism now dominates so much of the North Carolina and Virginia coast, some local governments along the Outer Banks have succeeded in getting the commercial crafts banned along their beaches.
Almost three years after Dare County sports fishermen forced menhaden fleets offshore, officials with the commercial fishing industry are beginning to bite back.
This week, representatives of the National Fish Meal and Oil Association visited coastal communities to address issues facing their industry - and fight to keep fishing for menhaden.
``We've gotten a little grumpy,'' said Bernard H. White, chairman of the National Fish Meal and Oil Association, which represents more than 2,000 menhaden fishermen and processors from Texas to Alabama and North Carolina to New Jersey. ``Some sports fishermen are bound and determined to find something about us to make our industry a villain and promote their own selfish agenda.
``For every menhaden boat in the Atlantic and Gulf, there are at least 10,000 recreational boats and millions of hooks and lines.
``Frequently, it's one or two wealthy guys with time on their hands and a goal to get our boats out of their ocean. We've gotten hammered here on this coast for the past two or three years. Now, we're going to start standing up for ourselves and being assertive. We're not going to take this lying down any more.
``This is not war. But we're not going to put up with the misinformation that's being spread about us.''
Armed with a package of promotional papers, inch-thick biological studies and a 12-minute video explaining their 150-year-old industry, White and Zapata Protein General Manager Steve Jones of Reedville, Va., toured the Carolina coast this week. They said they want to work with anglers to educate them about menhaden fishing methods. And they vowed to continue fighting efforts to close near-shore waters of the Atlantic to their fleets.
Last year, 70 vessels fished for menhaden on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts - about 20 of those boats hail from Virginia and two are based in Beaufort, N.C. The national industry brought in about $160 million in revenue. Watermen landed about 1 million tons of fish.
``Almost all our fish are caught within two miles of shore,'' said White, explaining that spotter planes scope out the schools then boats surround them with a 1,200-foot purse seine and scoop them into the holds. ``Menhaden are shallow water fish. About 60 percent of our catch comes from within a mile of shore.''
In Virginia - where the country's largest menhaden processing plant is located in Reedville and 70 percent of the nation's menhaden are landed - there aren't any restrictions about how close the big boats can come. Atlantic Coast Conservation Association anglers have tried four times to force the fleets off-shore. But each time, the state legislature voted those proposals down.
Since 1993, town officials in Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills have pushed laws through the North Carolina General Assembly banning menhaden boats from within 1.5 miles of their beaches from May 1 through Sept. 30 and from within a half-mile of the shore from October through December. Those same rules are in effect in Dare County, from Oregon Inlet to the Virginia border - except in Southern Shores and Kitty Hawk. Southern Shores anglers said they, too, hope to shove menhaden fleets further off their beaches.
``There's no question those boats affect our surf fishing,'' said Southern Shores recreational angler Paul Sutherland, a member of the Atlantic Coast Conservation Association and Nags Head Surf Fishing Club. ``When the menhaden boats come in, our fishing drops off.
``Nobody wants to inflict pain on someone else's income. But the industry survives with near-shore bans in other areas. They'll be able to exist with one here, too.''
``We asked Southern Shores, who asked the state fisheries regulators, to impose a 1.5- to 2-mile ban for our town,'' Sutherland said Friday. ``But that failed last year. We'll keep trying until we get it.''
Southern Shores sports fisherman Tom Charlton agreed. ``If other Outer Banks beach communities have that ban, we want it, too,'' he said. ``We'll try to see if we can get it again in 1997.''
Wayne Lee, a Nags Head recreational angler who helped push his town's menhaden ban, said there are four reasons he wanted those commercial boats to stay further off-shore: the potential for spills of bloody fish on beaches, the conflict with the recreational community, by-catch of other species and the impact on tourism.
Menhaden industry officials said their concerns are that sports fishermen are more infuriated by seeing working commercial boats than they are by the facts.
``In one out of every 1,000 sets, we might lose some fish. And that scares everybody,'' White said. ``We only have a half-percent by-catch - and most of that's jellyfish that no one wants around anyway. Stocks are larger now than they've been since 1962 - so we're not depleting the availability of menhaden as food for other species of fish.''
Jones agreed. ``If biologically they could tell us we're hurting the resource, we'd listen,'' said the Reedville plant manager. ``But just because they don't like to look at us, that's a hard pill to swallow.
``At least 43 percent of the water from Maine to South Carolina already is closed to menhaden boats,'' Jones said. ``If we lose other areas, we might not be able to survive. These closures aren't based on biology - like they are on other species. This is all because of political pressure from a few sports fishermen.''
KEYWORDS: COMMERCIAL FISHING by CNB