The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission faced strong pushback from commercial and recreational fishermen during its first quarterly meeting of 2025, held at the Hilton Garden Inn in Kitty Hawk on March 12 and 13.
It was the first time since 2018 that the commission convened on the Outer Banks, drawing more than 30 speakers who voiced concerns about regulations, stock assessments, and the future of commercial fishing in the state.
As Island Free Press reported, Joe Romano, a commercial fisherman from Wilmington, spoke at the meeting. “Over-regulation has been the default course, and commercial fishermen have borne the brunt of it. We called it death by a thousand cuts, one ruled after another, reducing access, increasing cost, driving more watermen out of business. For years, it was easy to marginalize commercial fishing because there were so few of us.”
At the heart of the debate were proposed management plans to impose new restrictions on commercial harvests of false albacore, spotted sea trout, and southern flounder. While recreational anglers will also see reductions, the most significant impacts will fall on the commercial sector. Many speakers questioned the science behind these restrictions, arguing that flawed or incomplete stock assessments were being used to justify sweeping regulatory changes.
“Currently, we have stock assessments that have failed peer review or are not being done at all to support the possible new rules,” said Dare County Commissioner Steve House. Dare County board chair Bob Woodard echoes this concern, stating, “I’m concerned that most of the recommendations placed before this commission do not include a reliable, up-to-date stock assessment of the various species in question.”
One of the most contentious issues was the False Albacore Management Plan, which calls for a 28 percent reduction in overall harvest- 27 percent for recreational and 38 percent for commercial fishing. However, the plan acknowledges that “there is no baseline stock assessment for false albacore and, thus, no biological basis for reducing harvest.” Marine Fisheries Commissioner Sarah Gardner criticized the lack of scientific backing, warning that it eroded public trust.
“We are asking ourselves to make regulation based on no data,” Gardner said. “When we go about regulating this fish with no science, it’s going back to something that’s become really problematic. We’ve heard it over and over again today in this room that people are mistrusting the science, and now we’re going to say, trust us with no science. And that scares me.”
A particularly controversial vote involved a place to reduce commercial southern flounder landings while reallocating part of the stock to recreational fishing. The measure passed narrowly, 5-4, but will now go before an advisory committee for further planning.
Erwin Bateman, owner of Sugar Creek Restaurant in Nags Head, emphasized the real-world impact of these changes on consumers and local businesses. “Last year, in the month of July, I sold 15,000 people food in my restaurant. Do you think somebody from New Jersey, somebody from Illinois, somebody from Canada…they want to eat something that came from China? No, they want to eat fish that came from [Etheridge Seafood]. They want the freshest possible thing they can get.”
A Hatteras resident and longtime commercial and charter boat captain, Ernie Foster, condemned the reallocation of flounder to recreational fishing, particularly in light of the date. While commercial landings exceeded their quota by just 5700 pounds (1.6 percent over the limit), recreational anglers overshot their allocation by more than 14,000 pounds. “The commercial sector is doing exactly what they’re supposed to do,” Foster said. “What I know is that they’re taking this away from people who need it to survive.”
As the meeting concluded, the underlying question remained: who should have access to North Carolina’s fishery resources? “Is this a public resource?” Foster asked. “Should the consumers have access to that resource? If you live in Raleigh and you have two choices- spend thousands of dollars on a boat and go catch your own, or go to the fish market- what should the answer be?”
With ongoing debates continuing over quotes, regulations, and data reliability, the divide between commercial and recreational fishermen in North Carolina’s fisheries remains deep.
