Saving Seafood

Oyster Restoration Investments Net Positive Returns for Economy and Environment

February 25, 2025 — A report by the North Carolina Coastal Federation shows that NOAA and our partners’ investment in oyster restoration produces almost double the amount in economic and environmental benefits. The economic report (PDF, 43 pages) found that for every $1 spent on oyster reef restoration, the state sees $1.70 in return. Independent researchers from RTI International assessed the value of restoring the 400-acre Senator Jean Preston Oyster Sanctuary Network in Pamlico Sound.

“Investing in oyster reef restoration means investing in all of the benefits these reefs provide and the benefits of the restoration work itself,” says NOAA Marine Habitat Resource Specialist Stephanie Krug. “This report is vital in telling that story.”

Economic Benefits of Restoration

Between 2013 and 2023, NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation, the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, and local partners invested $20 million building the sanctuary network. This work:

  • Supported 143 jobs
  • Generated $34 million* in revenue for North Carolina businesses
  • Provided $8.7 million* in employee wages and benefits

*All monetary figures in 2023 dollars

“This work is a good shot in the arm for a lot of local businesses,” says Will Hollowell, Operations Manager at Stevens Towing Company of North Carolina. The local family-owned Stevens Towing transports and deploys the limestone, granite, and other materials used as a base for oyster reef restoration in the sanctuary network. During the spring and summer months, Stevens Towing employs 10 to 15 skilled contractors to carry out the work.

“There are the local quarries that supply the rock and the truck drivers that haul 43,000 tons of rock to our location. They need fuel, and they need lunch. Our tugboats burn 1,000 gallons of locally purchased fuel a day, and I buy roughly $3,000 worth of provisions and supplies every 2 weeks. That’s a good boost to these rural areas.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

NORTH CAROLINA: Coastal Resources Commission looks at permitting floating structures for aquaculture

June 21, 2021 — Shellfish growers may be able to use floating structures at their lease sites in the near future, once state officials create regulations for it.

The N.C. Coastal Resources Commission held its regular meeting Wednesday at the Beaufort Hotel on Lennoxville Road. This was the first in-person meeting the commission has had since February 2020 due the coronavirus pandemic.

During the meeting, the commission directed the N.C. Division of Coastal Management to look into drafting regulations for permitting floating structures for shellfish aquaculture leases. DCM Director Braxton Davis said he wants to come back to the CRC with drafted permitting rules at the commission’s September meeting.

Existing CRC regulations don’t allow floating structures on shellfish aquaculture leases, and any such structures found have to be removed.

N.C. Coastal Federation assistant director of policy Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic gave a presentation to the commission on the importance of floating structures to shellfish aquaculture Wednesday.

“The current need for the industry is to have some kind of floating structure on the lease,” she said. “Most of the states that have large (aquaculture) industries allow these structures.”

Read the full story at the Carteret County News-Times

Ambitious Vision for North Carolina’s Oysters Outlined in New 5-Year Plan

April 29, 2021 — Restoring oysters can boost water quality and offer shoreline protection from storms, and this week the North Carolina Coastal Federation released its five-year action plan, outlining steps to keep this valuable shellfish thriving.

Leda Cunningham, officer for Conserving Marine Life in the U.S. at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said North Carolina’s oysters are in good shape, but face threats from storms, poor water quality and the impacts of climate change.

She believes the new Oyster Blueprint offers an example for other coastal states of how to restore and protect oyster populations.

“In those 15 or so years, it’s led to measurable progress in the state, and that is really a result of the inclusive systematic approach that Coastal Fed has taken with its partners to identify challenges and opportunities with this special resource,” Cunningham stated.

Guided by the Blueprint over the years, North Carolina has restored nearly 450 acres of oyster habitat, grown shellfish aquaculture from a $250,000 to $5 million industry, increased the number of shellfish farms in the state tenfold, and developed a nationally recognized shell recycling program.

Erin Fleckenstein, coastal scientist for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, said the plan includes new management strategies to help safeguard North Carolina’s waters, particularly in the Newport River and Stump Sound.

Read the full story at the Public News Service

NORTH CAROLINA: Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project Complete

April 5, 2021 — More than 3,000 crab pots were collected from coastal waters earlier this year during a collaborative effort to address marine debris.

The Commercial Fishing Resource Fund Program provided $115,599 for the Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project, which was headed up by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, to hire 60 commercial watermen and women to collect lost crab pots in January from the Virginia line to Cape Carteret.

Pots typically end up lost as the result of weather and can become hung in structures such as bridges or drift into channels over time, increasing the likelihood of buoy detachment by vessel traffic.

“We all take great pride in our livelihoods and waterways. In my opinion, this project has been unbelievable in helping keep our waterways clean and to make sure that the crab mortality rates continue to remain low, since removing the gear also frees any fish or crabs left behind,” said Mike Mixon, who has been fishing for 36 years and docks in Wanchese.

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online

NORTH CAROLINA: 50 Million Oyster Initiative now supports 140 million oysters

January 14, 2021 — Good news for oysters! The North Carolina Coastal Federation and partners set out to restore 50 million oysters to coastal waters through their 50 Million Oyster Initiative. In the end, they nearly tripled the that goal with 140 million oysters living on 43 acres of newly created oyster reefs.

The initiative launched in Pamlico Sound, where the federation, state Division of Marine Fisheries and partners created 40 acres of new oyster sanctuary between 2017-2019. Monitoring of the Swan Island Oyster Sanctuary by the Division of Marine Fisheries in 2020 indicated oyster densities as high as 2,000 oysters per meter squared on this reef. This translates to roughly 136 million oysters on the oyster sanctuary alone, when the reef architecture is taken into consideration.

“We are very pleased with this sanctuary’s ability to grow oysters year after year, and will continue to monitor its performance as a reference for future sanctuary design and construction,” said Cameron Luck, oyster sanctuary biologist with the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

In addition to the highly successful Swan Island Oyster Sanctuary, an additional 3.5 acres of oyster reef were created as living shorelines and patch reefs throughout the state along private property and in harvestable waters. Monitoring results from these patch reefs indicate they also support high densities of oysters, with each acre supporting more than 1 million oysters.

Read the full story at The Coastland Times

NORTH CAROLINA: Hard-hit fishermen turn to new catch: cleaning up marine debris from southeastern shoreline

January 11, 2021 — Since July, a four-man crew of local commercial fisherman has switched their catch, resetting their lines on a different kind of haul: marine debris.

Unlike their lifelong trade of harvesting shellfish, the crew has found stocks of marine debris are plentiful. After walking nearly all the marshes from Sneads Ferry to Zeke’s Island, the men have encountered a seemingly endless yield of abandoned marine and construction debris.

Each storm and tide cycle churns up new debris for the crew to collect. With a 24-foot Carolina Skiff and a few homemade sleds assembled for clamming, the men trek through soupy shorelines, hauling about one ton of debris a day out of the waterway.

“We all grew up on the river — all of us did. But from the very first day we started this project, we had no idea the amount of debris out there,” crew supervisor Joe Huie said.

Tapped by the North Carolina Coastal Federation to help carry out a yearlong $2.4 million federal abandoned vessel and marine debris-removal program, the team is happy to have found steady work and put their skills to use. On their first day working the contract, the crew hoped they’d be able to find enough material to satisfy the program. Instead, they’ve found a theoretically neverending job (so long as the contract keeps getting renewed).

“After the first day, I said, ‘We could do this forever.’ I’m not even joking. We all looked at each other and said, ‘We could do this forever.’  Because that’s just how much it was,” Huie said. “We found so much debris we didn’t know if we could do the job. We were just physically exhausted at the end of the day. The first summer we did the contract I lost 27 pounds. It was brutal. It was a hot summer.”

Read the full story at Port City Daily

NORTH CAROLINA: NCCF, commercial fishermen prepare to recover lost fishing gear

January 8, 2021 — A Carteret County-based coastal conservation nonprofit and partnered commercial fishermen are preparing to collect lost fishing gear.

The N.C. Coastal Federation is set to begin its seventh year of the Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project. According to an announcement from the federation Tuesday, 31 commercial watermen along the northern and central coast will set out this week into sounds to collect lost crab pots. The boat crews will conduct crab pot removal each day starting around Friday. Removal will take approximately one week.

“Every year, crab pots and other fishing gear are lost in our sounds in a variety of ways,” the federation said. “Lost gear can get hung up or drift into channels, creating hazards to boaters and wildlife. Since 2014, the federation has led the Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project in an effort to remove lost crab pots from North Carolina sounds.”

With the help of various partners, commercial fishermen and women are hired to collect the pots during the no-potting period, which is the annual closure of internal coastal waters to all crab, eel, fish and shrimp pots.

Read the full story at the Carteret County News-Times

NORTH CAROLINA: NCCF seeks fishermen to help collect lost gear

November 30, 2020 — Commercial fishermen in Carteret County and elsewhere are invited to help the N.C. Coastal Federation clean up the waters by collecting lost gear.

The NCCF announced Nov. 17 it’s accepting applications from commercial fishermen to assist with its lost fishing gear recover project in 2021. According to the federation’s announcement, every year crab pots and other fishing gear are lost in North Carolina’s sounds, creating hazards for boats and marine life.

“The North Carolina Coastal Federation is seeking applications to help clean up this debris through the Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project,” the NCCF said. “The Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project, is part of a statewide marine debris removal effort led by the federation. This project is open to commercial watermen and women in North Carolina.”

NCCF coastal education coordinator Sara Hallas said the project was last administered in 2019.

“We had eight boats working off the central coast, or Marine Patrol District 2,” she said. This area includes Carteret County. “Five of these crews were from Carteret County; the type of gear removed is focused on crab pots.”

Read the full story at the Carteret County News-Times

NORTH CAROLINA: Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project Begins Mid-January

January 4, 2019 — A large scale cleanup project to improve water quality, remove fishing debris and collect derelict crab pots from all of Eastern North Carolina’s coastal sounds will soon get underway.

Commercial fishers and North Carolina Marine Patrol will participate in the annual cleanup effort which takes from January 15th to February 7th.  Now in its third year, the project received $100,000 in funding from the General Assembly, allowing the North Carolina Coastal Federation to hire and train 76 local fishers to remove lost fishing gear during the “no-potting” period.

“This is helping the economy,” said Sara Hallas, the Coastal Education Coordinator for the North Carolina Coastal Federation.  “This is a slower time of the year for the fishing industry, especially for the crabbing industry, the fishing would be closed during this time of the year. So it does give them an option for employment during the slow winter season.”

Crews, which are comprised of two people, are paid $450 per day.  Last year, 3,496 crab pots were collected from coastal fishing waters.  But Hallas expects crews will encounter more marine debris this year because of Hurricane Florence.

Read the full story at Public Radio East

North Carolina: Oyster Restoration Partners Detail Progress

May 22, 2018 — MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. — A little more than 30 visited the state port here Monday for a glimpse of the construction of a large-scale oyster restoration project.

Representatives from the North Carolina Coastal Federation, North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, North Carolina Sea Grant, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other partners were joined by the media and citizens for the behind-the-scenes tour of the port.

The port is the staging area for year two of the three-year Swan Island Oyster Sanctuary project that’s part of the Sen. Jean Preston Oyster Sanctuary Network, a system of oyster sanctuaries. In March, 25,000 tons of granite were delivered to the port for the project.

The Swan Island Oyster Sanctuary in Pamlico Sound near the mouth of the Neuse River is the largest project of the federation’s 50 Million Oyster Initiative, which aims to restore 50 acres of oyster reef by 2020. In the first year of the project, 15 acres were built. Ten more acres are expected to be added this year.

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online