DATE: Saturday, October 25, 1997            TAG: 9710250393

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NAGS HEAD                         LENGTH:   92 lines

COMMERCIAL FISH CATCHES ARE UP WATERMEN SAY IT'S TIME TO LIFT SOME LIMITS, RESTRICTIONS.

Only a few watermen have been allowed to enter North Carolina's commercial fishery since state officials stopped selling new licenses three years ago.

But during the first six months of 1997, landings of commercially caught fish increased by more than 2.5 million pounds over 1995 numbers from the same period.

Some species of fish, especially menhaden, saw leaps in the number of pounds landed. Others, like summer flounder, took a dive.

But fisheries managers as well as watermen caution that statistics like those that the state Division of Marine Fisheries released this week do not show the entire picture of the status of stocks in North Carolina's waters.

Looking at individual species, however, shows that some fish that had been in trouble are more abundant now than just a few years ago.

``King mackerel were a good surprise. The amount of effort on catching those fish is up significantly and the catches per trip are improving, too. That suggests good things about how the stocks are doing,'' state fisheries manager Mike Street said Friday from his Morehead City office.

In 1994, watermen brought 347,596 pounds of king mackerel to the docks. That number more than doubled this year, with fishermen landing 816,062 pounds of the saltwater species.

``That suggests there are more fish out there,'' Street said.

Catches of striped bass, one of the most controversial and popular fish targeted by commercial and recreational fishermen, more than tripled since 1994, with commercial landings jumping from 113,296 to 406,773 pounds.

``That has a lot to do with the quotas,'' Street explained. ``Striped bass stocks were declared recovered in 1996 so the quota relaxed a lot even since last year.''

Fisheries managers say rules on how big fish must be to keep, how much gear fishermen are allowed to use per trip, how many fish they're allowed to catch and what seasons they're allowed to fish have helped certain stocks.

Watermen, however, say other factors such as weather, efforts to improve water quality and even natural cycles have done just as much to bring back certain species.

Croaker, for example, are among the commercially caught fish that have never been regulated. In 1994, watermen landed 2.4 million pounds. This year, that number leaped to almost 7 million pounds.

Fishing restrictions didn't improve those catches. There are, quite simply, more croaker to be caught.

``There's just an incredible amount of fish out there in the ocean - and not just croaker,'' said Butch Midgett, who runs Etheridge Fishing Supply in Wanchese and sells gear to many Outer Banks watermen.

``It used to take months to catch our quota of flounder. Now, it's caught in days.

``The regulations they've put in place have helped some. But it's also weather. And they've begun to clean up the water.

``There are a lot more croaker, spot and gray trout out there than even those numbers show,'' Midgett said. ``But the market can't handle them all. So the boys stop fishing for 'em when the prices . . . drop.

``In the '80s, things were bad. We were getting mostly small or medium fish - and fewer of them. But the big fish are out there now - and most of the species are back.''

Last year, North Carolina's watermen pulled in more pounds of hard crabs than any other state in the country: 15.5 million. Within the state, the numbers dropped slightly this year.

And that may be because some who were landing hard crabs switched to peeler or soft crabs, which fetch more money. Peeler crab landings increased by 250,000 pounds since 1994. And 79,000 more pounds of soft crabs were caught this year than in 1994.

``Blue crabs are more abundant now than they were 20 years ago,'' Street said.

``That's been a natural occurrence. Environmental factors, probably more than anything else, influence spawning - and, therefore, the health of the stocks.''

Overseas markets also influence some catches. In 1994, North Carolina watermen caught 2,902 pounds of eel.

This year, they've already landed 45,097 pounds.

That's because Eastern markets opened up, Street said. So more people are targeting eels now that they're a coveted, and profitable, catch.

``No one wants herring or rockfish fisheries to be wide open, where everyone can catch as much as they want to at the expense of the stocks. But the restrictions they have on those species now are ridiculous, especially since they know the fish are out there,'' Midgett said.

``Here we are, struggling to survive as commercial fishermen because of rules and regulations.

``Really, what we ought to be doing is developing better markets to sell more of what we could catch.'' ILLUSTRATION: WHAT THEY CAUGHT

GRAPHIC

[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]

JOHN CORBITT

The Virginian-Pilot

SOURCE: North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries

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