THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701190084
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 96 lines
Waterman Willy Phillips feels forgotten.
Four years ago, the Columbia crabber and a group of his colleagues asked officials to control the growing number of people setting pots in North Carolina waters.
They said the pots clogged sounds and estuaries, and suggested a limit be set on the number of pots each crabber could pull.
Fisheries officials listened to the crabbers. The state stopped the sale not only of crabbing licenses but of all commercial fishing permits. No new fishermen have been allowed to enter the industry since 1994.
The state set up a Moratorium Steering Committee to study every aspect of fishing rules and practices. The legislature gave the group $250,000 and more than two years to complete the project. Last week, a legislative commission considered the committee's 155-page proposal - and 100 possible new fisheries laws.
But limiting crabbers or crab pots was not among the suggestions.
``We've been left out of a process that we helped initiate,'' Phillips said Friday from his home near Columbia. ``We're the real victims here now. We've been thrown to the wolves.''
Proposed changes to fisheries rules not only omitted any new restrictions on commercial crabbing, they removed crab licenses all together. So under the suggestion being considered by the General Assembly's Seafood and Aquaculture Committee, anyone who could fish commercially would also be allowed to catch crabs.
Rather than restricting new people from entering the industry, the recommended rules would make it easier for additional people to catch crabs.
``We have more than enough gear in the water already,'' Phillips said. ``We glut the market and everyone gets low prices. We wanted to cut the number of crab pots from the 1 million or so they have now, to 600,000.
``Instead, they're opening up the entire industry.''
Unlike other species of seafood, crab catches are not declining in North Carolina. This year, watermen hauled in more bushels of crabs than they had in decades. But so many people were selling crabs that prices plummeted at the docks.
Phillips and other crabbers suggested limiting the number of crab pots and allowing people to buy certain shares of the industry. Under their plan, no one would be allowed to work more than 600 pots. But outsiders could still commercially crab by purchasing pots.
Steering committee members recommended that recreational crabbers only be allowed to set five crab traps each - and must pay $25 for the privilege.
Dr. Michael Orebach, a Duke University biologist who formerly served on North Carolina's Marine Fisheries Commission, said the crabbers had come up with a unique plan to preserve their profession - but it was lost as the fisheries overhaul process grew. Crabbers succeeded in slowing the influx of people into their business, he said. And they still have time to lobby legislators about retaining a commercial crab license.
``It's a great irony that things have worked out the way they have,'' the professor said Friday. ``A lot of the crabbers who worked very hard on this are disillusioned. They feel frustrated.''
Over the past 10 years, as rules on other seafood species increased, fishermen who formerly tried to catch rockfish, gray trout or even shark turned to crabbing. Others came into the industry from the outside. Scores of immigrants flooded the already near-full waters with even more traps.
``The original effort to slow the number of people coming into the crabbing business was to combat what seemed to be people coming in from the outside,'' said Melvin Shepard, a Moratorium Steering Committee member who owns a commercial net business in Snead's Ferry.
``They put a moratorium on the number of people coming into the industry to combat that problem,'' Shepard said. ``But the steering committee voted down the request by crabbers to limit the number of people entering the business because . . . the moratorium was never intended to address limiting other North Carolina fishermen.''
By capping the number of crabbers, some fisheries regulators said, that group of watermen would have an exclusive right to fish for one species. Crabbers would be allowed to catch other types of fish. But fishermen wouldn't be allowed to turn to crabs when work on the ocean species was slow.
``What's kept North Carolina fisheries afloat is that the fishermen have been able to go from one species to another freely,'' Shepard said. ``Deciding how many crab pots each person can fish is not in our ballywick.''
Steering Committee member Susan West agreed. She said crabs should be the first species that fisheries management plans address. But she didn't see the need to develop a separate ban on crabbing licenses or additional crab pots.
``We felt it wasn't fair to give special protection to crabbers that wasn't given to other commercial fishermen,'' West said Friday from her Buxton home. ``I have very strong reservations about limiting entry on any specific species.
``The crabbers around here are fishermen,'' said West, whose husband is an Outer Banks waterman. ``They do a lot more than crab.''
Bob Lucas, the head of the steering committee - who also oversees North Carolina's Marine Fisheries Commission - disagreed. He said there should be a cap on the number of crabbers. And he's trying to convince elected officials to keep a crab license as part of the regulatory package.
``The crabbers started this. I agree with them that their industry cannot stand any more effort,'' Lucas said from his Selma law office Friday.
``I'd rather make a mistake toward preserving the industry than risk what wold happen if everyone were allowed to crab. You're really, really playing with people's livelihoods here.''