Dare resolution for closer meetings makes no headway with North Carolina fisheries commission

MANTEO — Despite the weight Dare County pulls in the state’s commercial fishing industry, a resolution requesting that one of four annual North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission meetings be held in the county will not affect change.

Rob Bizzell, Marine Fisheries Commission chairman, said Wednesday that he switched to centralized meetings for several reasons, including that it “gives equitable access to our meetings,” and he does not plan to change meeting locations.

The Dare County Board of Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution Feb. 5 requesting that the commission hold “at least one of its quarterly meetings in Dare County each year.”

“According to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, if Dare County has the highest seafood volume and value of any North Carolina county,” the resolution stated.

The commission has not held a meeting in Dare County since November 2018, “making it a challenge for watermen in Dare County and northeastern North Carolina to participate in meetings and public hearings that impact their livelihoods,” the resolution said.

Dare County Commissioner Steve House brought the resolution before the board. After it passed, he said he sent copies to each state commission member and to Gov. Roy Cooper. He also presented the resolution during public comment at the commission’s most recent meeting, Feb. 22 in New Bern.

House chairs both the Dare County Commission for Working Watermen and the Oregon Inlet Task Force.

“I am neither a recreational fisherman nor a commercial fisherman, but I do know right from wrong—that’s the way I presented myself to them,” he said of those two groups.

House said he put forward the resolution so Marine Fisheries Commission members could visit the areas affected by the regulations they put in place, and so that local fishermen and watermen could “come to one of their meetings without making a full-day trip.”

According to the commission’s online meeting schedule, New Bern is the closest meeting to Dare County that will take place this year—and that’s a 2.5- to 3.5-hour-drive one way, depending on from where in the county one is traveling.

When he presented the resolution to the other Dare commissioners, House said that watermen from Dare County and from Wilmington all “have a hard time” getting to New Bern.

The commission’s other meetings will take place in Beaufort, Raleigh and Emerald Isle, according to its online schedule.

Bizzell said in his Wednesday email that people from Wilmington would have “a great distance to travel” if a meeting were in Dare County, “and vice versa.”

“Plus, a number of our staff are parents, and if we can keep them closer to their home, that’s an extra plus,” he continued.

The last time the commission held a meeting in Dare County, “the weather was horrible,” Bizzell said. “People could not have been out working or doing much of anything. It was a great opportunity for the local people to attend one of our meetings. I counted three locals at that meeting.”

He concluded that for all those reasons, “I have no plans of changing the meeting locations.”

Bizzell holds one of the two recreational fishermen seats on the nine-person, governor-appointed commission. The other recreational fisherman seat is currently vacant, according to the commission’s website. There are also two commercial fishermen, one scientist, one commercial industry, one recreational industry and two at-large seats.

House said the commission chairman sets the meeting dates and locations.

“Since the new one came on in 2018, he’s decided to have all the meetings in the central part of the state,” House said. “His reasoning was it was more economical for the Division of Marine Fisheries.”

When the commission formed, the state statute that created it specified that one meeting must be in Raleigh and the other three would be held in coastal regions of the state. But it was “implied” and widely understood that those three meetings would be spread between the northeast, central and southeast coastal areas, House said.

“It’s ridiculous that they stopped having meetings here,” opined Jessica Merritt of Colington, who said she’s “very blessed and very proud to be from a seafood family.”

“[Between] the regulations and not having meetings to be able to voice our opinions to fight for our livelihood…they are definitely making it hard for our fishing community to keep our history and heritage alive,” Merritt said.

“Most of the commercial fishermen here can’t just up and drive to these meetings,” she noted.

Her grandfather, father and uncle were beach fishermen, and she recalled learning how to drive on the beach so she could drive the truck “while they pulled in the net back into the boat.”

Factors like stringent regulations and lack of access to regulatory meetings have “caused beach fishing to nearly not exist at all,” she said.

“We as a commercial fisherman family take pride in our work in our product,” Merritt continued. “I love to be able to put my boots on, walk outside [and] check my shedders for soft crabs, knowing that they are going to feed a lot of people who appreciate fresh local seafood.”

Her husband, Chris Merritt, said he doesn’t understand “why they are holding meetings so far away when…Dare County is the number one producing seafood spot in North Carolina.”

Marine Fisheries Commission meetings are not always advertised in local newspapers, and not everyone has computers or smart phones, noted the Colington crabber of 30 years who is from a multi-generational family of commercial crabbers.

“If they do advertise, you don’t have enough time to gather fellow fishermen to carpool inland,” Chris Merritt said. “We definitely feel like they don’t want [to know] or care about what we have to say. They are making it so hard to continue to fish and support our families.”

House attributed a recent “big hit” to the local seafood industry to regulations. The New Brunswick, Canada-based Cooke Seafood USA Inc. announced earlier this month that it will be closing the Wanchese operations of Wanchese Fish Company. Its Suffolk operations apparently will continue.

W.R. Etheridge established the fish processing plant in Wanchese in 1936, and the longtime local Etheridge and Daniels families ran it until the 2015 sale to Cooke, according to the Wanchese Fish Company website.

“They’re a huge conglomerate,” with “fish houses up and down the East Coast,” as well as in Europe and South America, House said of Cooke. With the closure in Dare County, “five commercial boats are going to Virginia now,” and five to eight local families lost their jobs.

“They just said they couldn’t make it work in North Carolina…basically because our industry’s too overregulated,” House said, naming “the limits, the season closures, the whole nine yards. They can land more fish in Virginia.”

Cooper did not respond to an inquiry on the matter by press deadline.