November 18, 2016 — KITTY HAWK, N.C. — On a sunny fall day when commercial fishermen would normally be on the water hoping for a big catch, many were crammed into a dimly lit hotel ballroom in Kitty Hawk on Thursday trying to head off proposed rules that could limit future catches.
The state Marine Fisheries Commission is considering a petition from the North Carolina Wildlife Federation to adopt regulations for shrimp trawlers operating in coastal sounds that would reduce the size of their nets, limit how long nets could be pulled in the water, permit shrimping only three days per week and eliminate night-time shrimping.
The goal of the changes, according to Wildlife Federation officials, is to protect fish nurseries.
“We have found doing the research – looking at the science, looking at the data and doing the analysis – that we are losing too many fish to shrimp trawling,” David Knight, a policy consultant for the Wildlife Federation, told the commission.
“It’s kind of crazy that it comes up now because we just passed, last year, the shrimp plan,” commission Chairman Sammy Corbett said.
One of the proposals would cut the length of the head rope attached to the top of a trawler net from 220 feet to 90 feet.