                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, January 25, 1996             TAG: 9601250586
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: ROANOKE ISLAND                     LENGTH: Long  :  121 lines

CRABBERS FAVOR LIMITS ON DENSITY OF POTS

Crabbers don't want the state to tell them how many pots they can pull.

They don't want rules regulating how many watermen can join their profession.

But they are interested in having the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries establish certain areas where only people who have traditionally crabbed can continue harvesting the valuable shellfish from that spot. Biologist Michael Orbach called such delineations ``exclusive regional areas.''

Crabber Willie Phillips of Tyrrell County said he preferred the term ``sustainable harvest regions.''

``I'd like to see the option of establishing a certain density level for each area - like a certain number of pots that each part of the water could sustain,'' Phillips said Tuesday night during a Limited Entry Workshop held at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. ``The crab pots are so dense out there in the Albemarle Sound, around the bridge, that it's only a matter of time before there are some real problems in that area.

``We have a density concern,'' said Phillips, who heads the Crabbers League of Aware Watermen. ``The local people can catch what's there. But when everyone else comes in from all over the place, we all get shut out.''

According to Phillips, about 958 North Carolina residents earn their full-time living by commercial crabbing. Full time, under his definition, means the waterman sells more than 6,000 pounds of crabs a year. Dare County has more crabbers than any other - with 174 full-time people.

An average income for full-time Albemarle area crabbers is about $30,000 annually, the crabbers estimated.

In 1994, the state General Assembly imposed a two-year moratorium on the sale of commercial fishing licenses. Legislators extended the ban until 1997 so that fisheries officials could study ways to overhaul the commercial and recreational fishing industries and regulations.

Tuesday night's workshop, which Orbach conducted on behalf of the North Carolina Sea Grant program, was one of five final workshops the state is sponsoring across North Carolina on limited entry options.

``There are too many crab pots out there. And, some say, too manypeople,'' Orbach told the group of about 15 crabbers who went to the Roanoke Island workshop. ``We're not going to decide how to regulate this. You all have to look at the effects different options will have on your industry. If you issue a license to everyone who has one now, though, you know that you really wouldn't be limiting anything.''

Options the state is considering imposing on commercial crabbers include:

Limiting commercial crab licenses to only those crabbers who catch more than 6,000 pounds per year.

Limiting each licensed crabber to a certain number of pots - probably between 300 and 500 each.

Having the state re-sell licenses after a crabber gets out of the business.

Allowing a crabber to re-sell his own license if he no longer wishes to commercially crab.

Establishing a lottery system for people who want to buy commercial crabbing licenses but don't currently own them.

Requiring watermen to purchase individual licenses for each crab pot.

``As soon as you put a limit on the number of pots I can pull, you put a limit on how long or how hard I can work,'' Corolla crabber Gregg Westner, 45, told Orbach. ``But if I'm limited in what I can earn crabbing, and take any money from other work to make up the difference, then I can't commercial fish any more because I won't be full-time. That's what this is all about, isn't it?''

Orbach said that wasn't the intent of a limited entry system. ``The idea is to catch the same number of crabs with fewer pots out there so there would be less pressure on the watermen who are doing it for a living,'' the biologist said. ``What would happen if everybody agreed not to pull so many pots?''

Said Westner, ``We'd all starve - that's what would happen.''

In Florida, Orbach said, lobstermen agreed to reduce the number of pots in the water in 1991. The next year, he said, they caught more lobsters than they had in the past decade. ``Some guys were making the same money with less effort,'' Orbach said of the Florida situation. ``That's good for everyone. Plus, it would make the recreational fishermen happy because it would get more pots out of the water.''

Manns Harbor crabber Benny Rippens said if he's limited to 300 pots, he'd have to quit working each day by 9:30 a.m.

``No, you won't,'' Phillips said. ``Because you won't be able to pay your crew any more. You'll have to pull all those pots yourself. And then, you will be out there on that water working all day.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

FISHERIES REGULATIONS

The Marine Fisheries Commission's Moratorium Steering Committee

is scheduled to make recommendations on overhauling fisheries

regulations this spring. The North Carolina General Assembly is

scheduled to enact new measures in the spring of 1997. New rules

probably would go into place in 1998.

Biologist Mike Orbach at the Duke University Marine Lab is

conducting a series of limited-entry workshops to come up with

recommendations on how to overhaul North Carolina's commercial crab,

pound net and flounder industries. If you would like to make

suggestions, or comment on any proposals, write him at 135 Duke

Marine Lab Road, Beaufort, N.C. 29516-9720. For more information, or

to talk to Orbach, call him at (919) 504-7606.

Additional workshops will be held at 7 p.m. tonight at the Duke

Marine Lab Auditorium in Beaufort; Jan. 31 at the University of

North Carolina-Wilmington in Morton Hall; and Feb. 1 at the Archdale

Building's ground-floor hearing room in Raleigh.