Promoting world class fisheries in North Carolina

Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning. Today, we’re offering you a piece authored by Allen Gant, Jr., the Chairman of Glen Raven, a major textiles manufacturer based in Burlington.

Mr. Gant also chairs a nonprofit called the North Carolina Marine & Estuary Foundation, an effort he helped launch in 2017. The Foundation envisions a North Carolina coast with world-class fisheries and thriving coastal economies. Fishing is the vital industry to eastern North Carolina, but our coastal waters are nowhere close to realizing their full potential.

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What if I told you that North Carolina could have the best fishing waters in the country?

We have all the ingredients. It’s the Outer Banks, not Florida, that’s closer to the Gulf Stream than any other point on the American continent.

North Carolina’s waters boast a rich seafaring history (with a generous helping of tall tales) involving pirates, shipwrecks, and war.

Eastern North Carolina already has an extensive infrastructure that supports recreational fishing and commercial-scale processing and distribution.

But we’re missing one ingredient: the fish. Or rather, a healthy supply of fish. After all, a world-class fishery is defined most by its abundant supply of choice species.

That’s why a group of lifelong fishermen, and business leaders banded together to create the North Carolina Marine & Estuary Foundation. North Carolina’s culture, history, and natural features leave us poised for world-class fisheries – we just need to organize ourselves and our policies to act strategically to realize the full potential of our God-given wonders.

Even now, the state’s fisheries are eastern North Carolina’s greatest economic resource. Recreational fishing generates over $1.7 billion in economic activity and supports over 36,000 jobs. Commercial fishing supports 5,000 jobs and contributes over $100 million to North Carolina’s economy. But we can be so much more.

For years, commercial and recreational fishermen have argued over short-term fixes that do not allow dwindling fisheries to properly recover or increase in population. It’s time that North Carolina looks at what is working and what is not working in its fisheries management.

A host of policies, some taken from what’s worked in other states, could be deployed here, and we’ve advocated for many of them. But what will truly set us apart is knowing precisely which policies work best here, which don’t, and then acting accordingly with haste. To do that, we need consistent, reliable data on population-level fishery health.

In 2022, the Foundation launched FINDEX, a proprietary tool that condenses fish population data into one figure to measure the health of a fish species in North Carolina waters. Our data shows that only 11% of our target fish species are stable, while 88% are deficient or depleted. No North Carolina fish population could be considered world-class right now.

We have much work to do to build on FINDEX and expand the data at our disposal. But we’ve already begun acting with the information we have now.

In 2023 and 2024, the Foundation partnered with the Wildlife Resources Commission to stock 2 million striped bass – among the most depleted species we’ve measured – in the Albemarle Sound. We’ve partnered with the Division of Marine Fisheries over this same time period to support the necessary techniques to measure stocking success.

Last year, the Foundation successfully advocated for a mandatory harvest reporting program. I concede that some anglers, like many hunters, will find the reporting requirement mildly annoying. But this new North Carolina policy will produce incredibly valuable data and trends, giving policymakers and regulators the information they need to make smart choices to move our fisheries toward world-class status.

And just this year, the Foundation launched a first of its kind satellite tagging program to track red drum in the Pamlico Sound and our nearshore ocean.

Our initial study indicated that with reliable data, if our fisheries were properly managed to reach a sustainability level of just “stable” – North Carolina’s fisheries could surpass $4.2 billion in economic impact and spur the creation of an additional 2,000 jobs. If we reach world-class status, the economic benefit and job creation will increase exponentially.

To put it plainly, this could be the single biggest economic development project for our state’s eastern seaboard – from Currituck to Calabash – perhaps all parts east of I-95. 

The path to world-class fisheries – and the economic boost that it would bring – is right in front of us. All we have to do is execute.

Interested in learning more about the Foundation and its mission to realize world-class fisheries and thriving coastal economies? Sign up to receive information from the N.C. Marine & Estuary Foundation here.