Heavy Nets, Heavy Hearts

As an early morning fog lifts from the waters of the Perquimans River Jonathan White begins his day by launching a shallow skiff into the river. As he readies his boat for fishing, Jonathan expresses the uneasy hope that his pound nets have managed to trap something other than the herring for which they were designed.
"I know you've come out here to see the herrings but I still hope I didn't catch many," White admits. "Every one I catch is one I'll have to throw back."

These nets were designed to trap the blue back and alewife (also known as owl-eye and goggle-eye) herring that traverse the Perquimans River as they spawn each spring. But this year the herring season was over before it even began for White and many other fishermen in the western part of the Albemarle Sound Management Area.

White's family has fished this river with these very pound nets for generations. Three of his four pound sets, numbered 00001, 00003 and 00004, were among the first state permitted nets of their kind in North Carolina.

As his boat approaches the first pound net of the morning, Jonathan nods toward a crowd of coots, seagulls and heron, nearly 50 birds in all that have gathered for a breakfast feast at a net full of herring. "The birds are definitely eating all the fish I would have been sellin'," White says, shaking his head with dismay.

The Closure

The 2001 river herring season came to a close on Feb. 23, a time when the herring fishery traditionally gets underway in the rivers and tributaries to the Albemarle Sound.

This early closure came as the result of nearly 10,000 lbs. of overages in the Albemarle herring gillnet fishery in the eastern part of the region. When the herring gillnet fishery closed on Feb. 8 it was only a matter of time before that 10,000 lb. overage would be deducted from a discretionary quota. This discretionary quota accounts for the allowable herring harvests in all the rivers and tributaries in the Albemarle Sound area with the exception of the Chowan River.

"This is the first time anything like this has happened," says NC Division of Marine Fisheries Herring Biologist Kathy Rawls. "When the gillnet season was closed the pound netters, other than those in the Chowan River, were pretty much shut out. This is the first time that's happened. Gillnets came in around 76,144-pounds out of a 67,000-pound quota. I think in the future we can take steps to avoid this."

Part of the problem may be getting used to new reporting methods, says NC Division of Marine Fisheries Northern District Manager Sara Winslow. Prior to February 2000 only Chowan River pound net fishermen were monitored on a daily basis. That February the reporting system was altered, mid-season, to allow for daily reporting of other participants in that fishery, including gillnet fishermen.

"As a result of enacting a new system mid-season, the reporting was gray for a while as everyone got used to the new procedures," explains Winslow. "Everybody went over last year. The discretionary quota went over by 20,000-pounds because the reports weren't recorded in a timely fashion. The gillnet harvest was around 83,00-pounds and the discretionary harvest was around 57,000-pounds."

The Fisheries Management Plan for River Herring and Shad, laid out by the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission, puts the 2000 harvest levels in perspective.

The plan states: The annual commercial quota (calendar year) for river herring in the Albemarle Sound Herring Management area shall be 300,000 pounds to be allocated as follows:

1. 200,000 pounds to the pound net fishery for the Chowan River Herring Management Area;

2.  67,000 pounds to the Albemarle Sound Herring Management Area gill net fishery; and

3. 33,000 pounds to be allocated at the discretion of the Fisheries Director.

When fishermen consider their landings for 2000, it makes the 2001 landings (still undetermined but expected to fall within the overall quota restraints) bleak if not disastrous.
For many fishermen, that disaster may be greater than the financial burden alone. For fishermen like Jonathan White, the impact will be in lost time, lost heart and lost connections with family traditions. This could very well be the last year a member of the White family participates in their traditional fishery. As much as the loss of income, White dreads losing touch with his heritage.

"I'm sure people around here are tired of hearing me talk about my heritage and how pound netting on the Perquimans is so important to me," White says. "I understand that my heritage is just that, mine. And it doesn't mean anything to anyone else; they have their own points of pride, their own heritage. But the truth is I really love having this connection to my family's past. I can do a lot of other things. I've been working for myself a long time. I do other kinds of fishing and I've done carpentry. So I don't have to get through the season on pound netting but I want to if I can."

The Quota

As Jonathan White culls over a catch of nearly 500 lbs. of goggle-eye herring for a scant few nanny shad, catfish and white perch, he expresses misgivings about some proposed fixes to the river herring problem.

"Sara Winslow has assured me that there will be herring for fishermen on the Perquimans next year," White says. "She says that they can cut the gill netters off sooner. But, tell you the truth, I'm not comfortable with that. I don't want to take food out of the gill netters' mouths. And I don't think I should have to, the quota is a joke. I think every fisherman in the Albemarle Sound Management Area pretty much agrees that there are a lot more herrings in the water than the science reflects."

At the annual meeting of the Albemarle Fishermen's Association (AFA), White's sentiments were reflected time and again by both gillnet and pound net fishermen. One gillnet fishermen from the western part of the Albemarle Sound Management Area gasped for air between sentences as he voiced concerns for the future of his fishery. "I did not catch herring one this year! And if this herring plan goes on unchanged it will mean the end to the gillnet fishery in my part of the Albemarle Sound Management Area. And there's herrings there, there's herrings there right now."

AFA President Terry Pratt expressed doubts and dissatisfaction with the Division's practices and science. Pratt and other fishermen believe that the division is expending too little effort collecting data on the water and too much time "extrapolating" the data they already have.
"If we' goin'ta manage the fisheries we goin'ta have to do it in the water," Pratt says. "Right now a lot of folks are trying to manage fisheries out there in cyberspace. That ain't goin'ta work. If we goin'ta manage fish we goin'ta have to get back in the water."

But the Division, not surprisingly, sees the situation a bit differently. "The Division collects our data in a variety of ways," says Sara Winslow. "We collect data from gill netters and pound netters through the fish houses and we collect our own independent samples. When we do our sampling we can use a variety of mesh sizes, some larger than normal and some smaller than fishermen are legally allowed to use. This sampling regime allows us to catch and evaluate the virgin spawners, fish spawning for the first time, and to evaluate the age makeup of the stocks."

"Fishermen are varied in what they do and what they see," explains Kathy Rawls. "Depending on the gear types and where they target their fish, fishermen see a great deal of variation. [The Division] has to evaluate and take into account the variations that all the fishermen see."
One thing nearly all the Albemarle herring fishermen see is inequity between participants in their fishery. Under the current plan the Chowan River pound netters are allocated a quota of 200,000 lbs. Although several people hold pound net permits for the Chowan, an unofficial count reveals that between 50 and 60 permitted pound sets, operated by 14 people are active on the river. In other words, 14 people have a quota equal to twice the combined quotas of all other participants in the Albemarle river herring fishery.

In March, the North Carolina Fisheries Association President Jerry Schill presented the Marine Fisheries Commission with a proposal to correct this grievous inequity on behalf of the AFA. The proposal would increase the overall herring quota for the area significantly, would create two separate herring seasons to insure fisheries for both alewife herring, which arrive in early spring, and blue back herring, which generally arrive later, and would do away with the specific allocations to the pound net fishery.
Winslow is not in favor of the quota increase but seems amenable to some other areas of the plan. "Similar to what [the AFA] proposed, we intended to treat the Albemarle area in aggregate with the discretionary quota," says Winslow. "The problem we had with it this year is that the gillnets hit so hard. Once we issue a proclamation that says we're going to close the gillnet fishery, those landings go up. It happens every year… As far as creating two seasons, the only way to separate the herring landings would be to manipulate the herring season."

Heavy Hearts

Regardless of the Division of Marine Fisheries reasoning (or as many fishermen would say, rationalizing) the Albemarle herring fishery is essentially closed. According to the Albemarle Sound Herring Management Plan, the division ultimately hopes to reach a long-term river herring spawning stock biomass of 8-million-pounds "in a manner that is biologically, economically, and socially sound." Fishermen aren't convinced that the plan fulfills more than one of those directives.
William Mathew Smith, family friend of the White family and 84-year-old lifetime fisherman, puts the herring struggle in his own historical perspective.

"The herrings go in cycles, some years they ain't hardly enough herring for dinner and others there's more herrings than you can scoop out of the net," he says. "I remember one year there was so many herrings it was all you could do to fill your boat up, ride to the fish house, cut 'em and salt 'em, and then go fish the same net again. If it was like that this year it wouldn't make no difference, you still couldn't sell a one."
"I tell you what, it's a wonder the good Lord gives us anything to eat at all. They're taking the fish right out our mouths," adds Mr. Smith's wife, Mrs. Ethel Smith.

So with a heavy heart, many herring fishermen are hanging up their nets, some for the last time. Jonathan White will be pulling his pound nets up soon and storing them until next year when he can make the decision whether or not to battle the will of the fisheries regulators. For now he has other nets to mend. There will be other fishing to do soon and with the loss of herring this year he's got to make up for lost time.

Terry Pratt closes out the annual AFA meeting urging everyone to try to look at things from the other fellow's perspective, whether that other party is Division of Marine Fisheries Director Pres Pate, Sara Winslow or whomever.
But despite his call for mutual understanding and communication Pratt ends on a decidedly ominous note. "If you're anything like me, you don't fish 'cause of the money," Pratt says. "A whole lot of the time the money ain't no good. You fish cause you flat out love to fish. But when I see stuff like this come down the pike I know—it ain't pretty but I know—some of us is goin'ta have to make some serious choices."

Jonathan White eases his small boat into a herring pound net, which his family has maintained for generations. The river herring season closed before it even began for White and other fishermen like him in the western part of the Albemarle Sound Management Area. Although his nets are heavy his boat will remain empty.

 
Jonathan White releases a writhing net full of herring.

 
This photo is a White family treasure depicting four generations of Whites and three generations of commercial fishermen. The three adults in this photo are Jonathan White's (L to R) Grandfather Jim Bob White, Great Grandfather Bob White and Great-Great Grandfather Ike White. The little boy in the photo is Jonathan's father, James White, who did not go on to become a commercial fisherman.

 
"Pound nets are a great way to collect data, they allow for the fish to be caught alive and released alive," says Jonathan White. "I'm worried that the Division won't have legitimate landings data for this year without real records of pound net catches. And the pounds are catching plenty of herrings."