Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture

North Carolina Sea Grant provides expert assistance to the state’s diverse seafood and fishing industries, serving on advisory panels and connecting researchers to people who work in commercial and recreational fishing, aquaculture, and seafood. For decades, Coastwatch has chronicled how such projects help coastal communities, coastal cultures, and the long-term health of fisheries.

May 1, 2008

Keeping Local Seafood Afloat: Workshop Explores Consumer Trends And Marketing Strategies

From pet food to seafood, the recent scare over contaminated imports has people questioning the origins of what they, and even their four-legged friends, are eating. Just as products labeled "natural" or "organic" are growing in popularity along grocery store aisles, the demand is rising for products that are locally grown and harvested.

Mar 1, 2008

SEA SCIENCE: Research Examines Impacts And Options For Fish Farming

But with celebrity comes scrutiny. The farms are under the public microscope for the wastewater, or effluent, they discharge from their earthen fish ponds into estuarine creeks that empty into the Pamlico Sound.

Dec 15, 2007

LOCAL CATCH: Watermen Save Ocracoke Fish House

Local captains, who work the Pamlico Sound and surrounding waters, supply all the catch at Ocracoke Seafood. Recently, the group of 35 full and parttime commercial fishermen — who joined together to form the Ocracoke Working Watermen's Association — netted $325,000 from a grant to save the last fish house on the island.

Dec 1, 2007

SEA SCIENCE: No One Ring: Testing The Effects Of Cull Rings On Crab Landings

Under a blue September sky, Phil Smith is hard at work, harvesting blue crabs under the Cape Fear River. "They are fantastic creatures," he says, predicting: "If we all dropped off the face of the Earth and all there was was nice and clean water, crabs would be so abundant" their shells would fill coastal waters.

Dec 1, 2007

Curbing the Import Appetite: Selling American Shrimp in the U.S. Market

Pink shrimp. Brown shrimp. White shrimp. Ecuadorian shrimp. Vietnamese shrimp. Can you tell the difference? Most Americans can't. But who cares? Shrimp is shrimp, right?

Members of Thompson family with fishing net

Dec 1, 2007

Wild Caught: The Life and Struggles of An American Fishing Town

For centuries, small-scale commercial fishers have ventured forth into the Atlantic to hunt for shrimp and finfish. Recently, they forces of modernity — from ever-tightening regulations to a rise im imported seafood to explosive coastal growth — have threatened their proud way of life.

Oct 1, 2007

Dogs Days: Estimating Spiny Dogfish Populations

For 10 years, Roger Rulifson, an East Carolina University (ECU) researcher, has studied spiny dogfish through funds from five N.C. Fishery Resource Grants (FRG). FRG is funded by the N.C. General Assembly and administered by North Carolina Sea Grant.

Oct 1, 2007

Fish House Study Quantifies Decline

When Clayton Fulcher Seafood Company closes, Luther L. Smith & Son Fish House will be the last seafood packing house in Atlantic, a community in Carteret County's Down East area.

Oct 1, 2007

Oral History: Documenting Down East Fishing Traditions

Fulcher's fond memories of the seafood business are being recorded for an oral history project at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Markers Island.

May 1, 2007

SEA BASS POTS: Bigger Mesh May Yield Larger Fish

Burgess is working on an N.C. Fishery Resource Grant (FRG) to study the efficiency and effectiveness of different configurations of black sea bass pots. FRG is funded by the N.C. General Assembly and administered by North Carolina Sea Grant. Rudershausen and Scott Baker, a Sea Grant fisheries extension specialist, are helping with the study.