Wednesday, October 14, 2026
By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice on March 14, 2025
Facing skeptical and sometimes fiery comments from commercial and recreational fishing interests from Beaufort to the Outer Banks, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission met at the Hilton Garden Inn in Kitty Hawk on March 12 and 13 for the first quarterly meeting of 2025. It was the first time since November of 2018 that the commission has met on the Outer Banks.
More than 30 speakers addressed the commission, consistently calling out what they criticized as questionable science and data and the effect it has had on the commercial fishing industry.
“Over-regulation has been the default course, and commercial fishermen have borne the front of it,” Joe Romano, a commercial fisherman from Wilmington told the commission. “We called it a death by a thousand cuts, one rule after another, reducing access, increasing cost, driving more water men out of business. For years, it was easy to marginalize commercial fishing because there were so few of us.”
The commission was voting on a number of management plans, including restrictions that would directly impact the livelihoods of the commercial fishing industry. Although recreational harvest will also be affected by restrictions on false albacore and spotted sea trout, the onus of the reductions in the amount of fish than can be caught will fall on commercial fishing.
During public comment, almost every speaker pointed to flawed stock assessments of the fish as well as questionable data.
“Currently we have stock assessments that have failed peer review or are not being done at all to support the possible new rules,” Dare County Commissioner Steve House said in public comment.
Chair of the Dare County Commissioners Bob Woodard made much the same point. “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…thus, making all the recommendations before this commission that I’ve seen in the last 12 years on my term as a commissioner, arbitrary at best,” he said.
The report acknowledges, “There is no baseline stock assessment for false albacore and thus, no biological basis for reducing harvest.”
Nonetheless, the MFC justifies seeking a reduced catch as a “proactive management of false albacore to limit expansion of new and existing fisheries.”
Marine Fishery Commissioner Sarah Gardner was also critical of the information provided to the commissioners, noting in her remarks on the false albacore plan that the lack of evidence supporting restrictions was creating a crisis in public confidence.
“We are asking ourselves to make regulation based on no data…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,” she said.
In what was perhaps the most controversial voted of the day, the commission also voted on a plan that would reduce commercial southern flounder landings and give recreational fishing some of the commercial portion of the stock.
The motion did pass on a five to four vote, although the management plan will now go to an advisory committee for an implementation plan.
In opposing restrictions on commercial catch, Dare County Commissioner Ervin Bateman, who owns Sugar Creek Restaurant in Nags Head, pointed out the impact on commercial fishermen.
“Last year, in the month of July, I sold 15,000 people food in my restaurant for the month. Do you think somebody from New Jersey, somebody from Illinois, somebody from Canada that comes to my restaurant…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,” he said.
What a number of speakers found particularly troubling was that the rule was seen as rewarding recreational catch of the species even though Marine Fisheries data indicated recreational landings far exceeded the management allocation for the species in 2024. Commercial landings were 1.6 percent over the allocation or 5,700 pounds. Allocated 30 percent of the catch last year, recreational landings were more than 14,000 pounds over the limit.
“The commercial sector is doing exactly what they’re supposed to do,” Hatteras resident Ernie Foster, who has been a commercial and charter boat captain for over 50 years told the Voice. “What I know is that they’re taking this away from people who need it to survive.”
He also posed a question about who ultimately benefits from access to commercial fishing.
“Is this a public resource,” he asked. “Should the consumer 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 the fish market.”
Comments
DOGE
NCMFC and NOAA. They have ignored the true facts long enough. The whole goal was to grow the Pork. That’s basically how they keep their “Important” jobs. Let local seafood be caught and sold without crazy restrictions, (observers, multiple cameras ect.)
NC Seafood Matters,
USA Seafood Matters,
limit seafood imports.
Local seafood is the best!
Glenn
Well, maybe if they didn’t pollute all the waterways with their boats, and damage the ecosystem with their overfishing… MAYBE they wouldn’t be so REGULATED???
Doesn’t bother me as a Vegan.
Hal McCray
American people better wake up! Go to Harris Teeter, Food Lion and Publix and specifically look where your seafood originates- China, Vietnam, Chile, Philippines, ect., countries where they farm raise seafood with dangerous levels of dioxins, and feeding the shrimp and fish human feces. And you eat this, while running American commercial fisherman out of business! Unreal!
Raymond
As a commercial fisherman who has done nothing but commercial fish his whole life of 45 years. I’ve seen a lot of change on commercial fishing in those years and the most of what I have seen were restrictions that to me make no sense such as, stopping the fishing of gill nets on weekends in the sounds and esturaries. Now you tell me the scientific reason for that in other words is it because turtles only swim on the weekends come on people what is it that you get in the sounds and esturaries more on the weekends than on the week days? Another one is how come you have different amounts of quota for how many flounder can be packed by trawl boats for each state when there are no restriction on where those flounder get caught. Just saying makes no sense to me why they say that all there restrictions are based on science and data gathered from what? These are two of many that make no sense to me.
Craig
Hey Glenn, fishermen have no interest in polluting and overfishing. It’s how they earn a living, why would they want to risk that? Enjoy your soy.
Dewey
Hello KIP & MARK,
Over 20 million pounds of gassed chemical treated is imported into the United States every year and it’s sold here on the OBX at grocery stores, restaurants and a few seafood markets, its cheaper and always stays red given the chemical process the tuna goes thru, The article and video at bottom is really good it shows the process of taken old frozen tuna and turning it into brand new looking and lasting watermelon red remember most public consumers buys with there eyes, and there aren’t told it’s been chemical treated
once package/shipment is open.
The import of gassed chemical treated carbon monoxide has been banned in Canada,Japan and E.U. because it mask how old the fish could be.
Most of chemical treated imports come from VIETNAM, PHILIPPINES AND INDONESIA.
Sold at Grocery stores on OBX it will some time be labeled previous frozen with country of origin
As you can see the difference between domestic natural on left is getting some age with air but still plenty good i’d eat it and gassed previous frozen imported tuna on right stays red and that doesn’t tell consumer its been chemical altered.
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https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/food-safety-health/outcry-grows-over-questionable-vitamin-tuna-treatment-process
There are many businesses businesses plan to serve this chemical treated imported tuna some as “AHI” tuna or Sushi tuna because it’s cheaper than domestic and it last for weeks. just google gassed tuna it will educate the public
The domestic local fishermen can’t fish for cheap fish as the many regulatory and economic factors that we have to fish under, but the United States allows this into the US market place with little or know standards which we domestic have to fish under.
In closing you guys be careful if you like eating tuna on the OBX and do your homework and support natural tunafish caught by your local fishermen.
Thanks
Dewey Hemilright
Niccolo Donzella
Thank you, Dewey, for the education. I agree completely.
Browny Douglas
Over 90% of the seafood consumed in our country is already imported. Because of the Coa$tal Con$ervation A$$ociation’$ influence on the DMF, some NCGA members, plus every NC Govenor since 1992 it appears the DMF is ok with the idocy to erase a food producing industry from NC that has for many years provided millions and millions of people across the country with needed protein.
A nation that cannot feed itself cannot defend itself. Remember that.
Browny Douglas
Bottom line is the DMF and MFC manage people, not marine resources. Thats been going on for 33 yrs. I do not believe there is an effective argument to the contrary.
Phillip
Interesting topic to me as a charter fishing operator, as a die-hard supporter of locally sourced seafood, and as someone who loves to fish and spend time in our local waters.
The thing that I want to understand better, and I’m simply not seeing it, is the suggestion that the MFC is not using science to determine sustainability or stock assessements… that the rules are arbitrary. If this is true, then this should concern every one of us. So what is the truth of it? What is the basis for these claims?
Here’s what I do know. Our fisheries have been under constant pressure pretty much since the first permanent settlements on our coasts. I know that pressure has increased steadily and is still going. 40 years ago, New Hanover County had about 130 thousand residents. Today it’s almost double that. In that same time, Carteret County went from about 44 thousand to close to 75 thousand residents. Dare County has nearly tripled in population over that same 40 year period. That’s a lot of restaurants and fish markets, and a lot of recreational fishermen. When you add in the exploded tourist market, we’re asking an awful lot out of our waterways.
Point being, logically, it should come as no surprise that our stocks are getting low and definitely under stress. You’d have to be pretty foolish to argue otherwise. But we need real, reliable data and we need a coalition of folks to gather, evaluate, and act on that data.
It’s painfully obvious that we don’t have trust between the stakeholders (fishermen) and the regulators (DMF and MFC), and that’s the problem we need to solve. That should be the priority. So my question is, how do we get there?
Because, until we solve this, no one is going to be happy and this conflict is not going to go away.