Capt. Hodges circles Jenny back around in Raccoon Creek (click on image to enlarge)
I have mentioned the 40-foot F/V "Jenny" in a couple of prior postings, where she appeared in the background... but today I decided to take my last opportunity to feature the boat as the subject of the daily photo.
Jenny is a prime example of a Down-East NC heritage treasure... the flare-bowed wooden workboat style known as "Core Sounders" or "Sink-Netters," developed since the advent of gasoline engines by the boat-builders of Harkers Island, NC.
Boat building has taken place on Harkers Island (see map, right or View Larger Map) since 1730, when the island's namesake, Ebenezer Harker, purchased the island and set up a plantation and boat yard there.
There are currently three boat-builders on the island, all small operations... one boat at a time, hand built, and without plans - only tried and true "rules of thumb" for achieving the shallow drafts and flared bows that make the boats perfect for navigating the "thin waters" above the shoals of NC's Bogue, Back and Core Sounds, and for taking on the steep waves stirred up in the sounds by frequent squalls.
Jenny was built by Clarence Willis, who learned his craft from the master of the style, boat builder Brady Lewis.
Lewis is credited with developing the "Core-Sounder" archetype in the 1930s, particularly the signature flared bow. He is the "grandfather" of the style, and his methods have been passed down to the current generation of Harkers Island builders.
I was really lucky that Capt. Hodges circled Jenny back around after leaving the dock at the Oriental Yacht Club, or I could not have gotten the above shot of her head-on... A friend of the crew was lucky, too... He had forgotten his beer, cigarettes and lighter on-board, so Capt. Hodges came back around and First Mate "Fuzzy" made the hand-off:
(click on image to enlarge)
... Then Jenny and crew (including the ship's dog, Belle) left in search of green-tail shrimp:
Shuttles, twine and electrical tape at the ready for net repair
For the past couple of days, First Mate "Fuzzy" of the commercial fishing vessel "Jenny" (like in Forrest Gump, he explained) has been repairing "mongoose trawl" nets on the deck of the Oriental Yacht Club in preparation for white shrimp season.
Jenny has been docked at the OYC for the past couple of weeks while Capt. Dave Hodges and crew repaired the bulkhead between the OYC building and Fulcher Seafood Co.
Jenny is a 40 foot "Core Sounder" wooden commercial fisher, capable of operating in less than three feet of water, thanks to a shallow draft and a tunnel-mounted prop.
Capt. Hodges is particularly proud of Jenny's hydraulic system for controlling the outriggers and warp cables, pointing out that very few vessels in her size-range sport such equipment, instead relying on engine-driven pulley linkages.
The Capt. and crew have stayed a little longer than planned because Jenny's starter fritzed out... They hope to have it repaired and re-installed soon so they can begin the white-shrimp season.
Ice-house at the Pamlico Packing Co. complex on First Street in Vandemere
(click on image to enlarge)
Today I took an afternoon drive to some parts of Pamlico County I have not previously visited by land.
This is one of the buildings at the "Pamlico Packing Co." fish-house complex on First Street in the town of Vandemere (population 289)(Vandemere town web site here), at the confluence of Vandemere Creek into Bay River (see map below). A "fish-house" is a place where commercial fishing vessels can dock and unload their catch for processing, packing and loading onto trucks for trans-shipment.
This building was (is?) apparently the ice-house on the complex... Commercial fishing vessels need vast quantities of ice in their holds to keep their catches fresh until they get back to the fish-house, so ice production is a standard function at fish-houses.
According to this New Bern Sun Journal article about Vandemere, the "Pamlico Packing Co." was formerly the "I.J. Packing Co." until purchased and renamed in 1941 by Earl Holton and his brother-in-law Robert Whorton (who also once owned a packing and canning company here in Oriental.)
I can find nothing about "Homer Wall," whom the sign on this building identifies as the owner of "Wall's." According to Pamlico County tax records, the part of the complex on which this building stands is owned by Pamlico Packing and "Vandemere Ice Co.," which NC Sec'y of State in turn indicates is still owned by the son-in-law of Earl Holton...
A local informed me the fish-house is still operational, though it looks to me like some of the buildings are not used very much, if at all.
The ice-house building is marked on the map below:
Capt. and crew of "Shelly Lewis" prepare to get underway
(click on image to enlarge)
The "Shelly Lewis" shoved off this afternoon to go shrimping. I'm guessing she is going out to trawl in Pamlico Sound, but that is just a guess.
The Captain (on the right, on the dock) and his two crew spent about a half hour carrying gear and provisions out to the boat at one of the Garland Fulcher Seafood Co. docks on Raccoon Creek.
About a case of Dr. Pepper (I'm guessing that is reserved for the Capt.'s mess), several of bottled water, bags of groceries, boxes of who knows what, block and tackle, gasoline (prob. for a generator) and my favorite, the giant sealed plastic bag stuffed with clothes, shoes and a sleeping bag (crewman in black shirt).
Once loaded, they backed out into Raccoon Creek, then headed headed out the harbor towards the end of the breakwater and Oriental Marker No. 8:
Godspeed, "Shelly Lewis," and may you return safely with all aboard and a hold full!
A small boat trawls for shrimp in Oriental harbor at sunset
With June comes the evening ritual of a dozen or more small boats trawling for Brown Shrimp (Penaeus aztecus) in and near Oriental Harbor... they are not allowed to shrimp on the other side of the Hwy. 55 bridge, seen in the above photo.
The boats motor slowly around the harbor and a bit into the River Neuse (generally counterclockwise, so far as I can tell) dragging their trawlnets behind, then hoisting and sorting the catch in the boat.
Typically the first shrimpers show up in the harbor in the late afternoon/early evening, and by sunset there will be a dozen or more working the harbor, many staying until near midnight.
Brown shrimp comprise about 65 percent of all shrimp catches in NC... In the fall, shrimpers will concentrate on White shrimp (aka Green Tail) and a minuscule catch of pink shrimp in the spring.
Local commercial fisherman, Capt. Keith Bruno, sets gill-nets along the banks of the River Neuse between Windmill Point and Wiggins Point. (See map below)
Helping the Capt. are his two sons, Zack and Ben. Ben is on the bow tossing over the gill-net as Capt. Bruno backs away from the anchor buoy at the end of the net (yellow object in water, left side of photo.)
It was a rainy day in the area... I was lucky to see the Bruno crew cruising the river during a lull in the rainfall. Of course I got to get back in the car when the rain started pouring, while the Brunos motored off into the rain to set five more nets before the day was done.
Clams, scallop and oyster shell remains in a cage on the stern of a commercial fishing boat, Harkers Island Harbor (click on image for full size)
Today's picture comes from Harkers Island Harbor, operated by the Carteret County Harbor Authority. Carteret County is home to most of North Carolina's commercial fishing licenses.
The harbor is inhabited mostly by 30-40 foot commercial fishing boats, about half the length of most of the commercial fishing vessels that line the two fish-house docks in Oriental's Raccoon Creek (as seen in the banner photo at the top of the blog.)
Vessels docked at Harkers Island Harbor (click on image for full size)
Captain Keith Bruno is pleased with this Atlantic Tripletail (Lobotes surinamensis) he pulled from one of his gill-nets along the Neuse River near Pierce Creek
Bruno, a commercial fisherman, does his own catching and his own retail selling of many fruits of the local waters... But after removing the rare Tripletail catch from his net, he proclaimed "you can't buy this one from me!"
Today and tomorrow, I will be bending the "City Daily Photo" rules to introduce you to Captain Bruno.
I hope you enjoy meeting him as I did...
Today I had the pleasure of accompanying Endurance Seafood owner Capt. Keith Bruno as he pulled his gill-nets set the previous night along the banks of the Neuse River and Smith's Creek. Bruno's prize catch of the day was the handsome Tripletail featured in today's photo.
Like not a few of Oriental's residents, Bruno has long experience working on water, and more than a few tales to tell about it...
From blood-curdling terror in the "Perfect Storm" of the North Atlantic to karmic respite along the sun-drenched beaches and ports of the Mediterranean... from a penniless vagabond sleeping under the docks of Bermuda to successful lobster baron... from cut-throat competition and anti-viral devastation of the New York lobster fishery to a happy family home in the welcoming world and diverse fisheries of Down East North Carolina...
Endurance:
en-dur-ance... n 1: PERMANENCE, DURATION 2: the ability to withstand hardship or adversity...
en-dure... vb 1: to undergo (as a hardship) especially without giving in...
Bred for Water:
Bruno, now 40, began his lifetime of working the waters as a 5 year-old, apprenticing with his father fishing lobsters out of Smithtown, N.Y., on Long Island Sound.
From 1989 to 1991, Bruno worked on lobster boats, first working the inshore fishery, then moving up to the tougher world and better money of offshore lobstering.
The Perfect Storm:
In 1991, as a weakening hurricane Grace was working her way into the North Atlantic, the offshore lobster boat which was Bruno's workplace and home for 7 of every 10 days, began heading back to port.
Before making it back, however, the boat was overtaken by the infamous "Perfect Storm" of 1991 (the one that killed the captain and 5 crew of the Andrea Gail, as fictionalized in the George Clooney movie)...
As the lobster boat struggled through the heavy storm-torn seas, Bruno was on deck when the boat broached to in the trough of mountainous waves. Lying parallel to the waves in the trough, the boat was helpless as the towering following wave crashed on top of her. Bruno was crushed against the bulwark by the deck-load of lobster traps and tons of water enveloping the boat as the wave tore abrest.
Being so pinned down by the weight and pressure of the traps and water may well have saved Bruno from being immediately washed over the open transom or out of a scupper to certain death in the stormy seas, but Bruno's legs were injured and his body heat had been sucked out by the mass of chilly water that flooded his protective oilskin foul-weather gear.
As Bruno struggled to re-orient himself on the open deck of the still-broached vessel, a crewmate grabbed him by the collar, hauled him into the cabin, unceremoniously dumped him on the floor where he lay alone as the crewmate returned to the danger on deck.
Sometime later, perhaps an hour or so, Bruno regained his senses enough to begin removing the soaked clothing from his chilled and battered body in an attempt to begin raising his body temperature.
While Bruno struggled to remove his upper garments, the boat's Captain entered the cabin, saw Bruno moving and growled that it looked like he was ready to go back to work. When Bruno understandably indicated that indeed he was not so ready, the Captain expressed his great displeasure at the news, and added some comments to the effect that Bruno seemed to lack certain traits of male anatomy.
Again later, as Bruno continued to struggle removing his dangerously cold and wet clothing, and as he realized his legs had been so injured as to prevent him from walking, much less assisting the crew on the heaving deck in the storm, the Captain returned to ask Bruno if he was finished with his beauty rest and ready to return to the world of working men, only to be dissapointed again by Bruno's negative response.
The next day, the storm abated but Bruno still battered, the Captain again asked if Bruno were ready to go back to work. While Bruno understood and expected that the boat would not discontinue further lobster fishing to take his injured self back to port, he knew he was not able to return to the physical work of the crew.
The Captain informed Bruno that he would not rate any pay for the remaining days at sea, and that Bruno was welcome to return to crying like a girl in his berth until the boat returned to port.
The Shore of Refuge:
Back ashore and out of the lobstering business, Bruno began recovering from his injuries.
Bruno received a call from an old friend who asked him if he was available for work. Bruno explained that he was not fit for the work of commercial lobster fishing...
"But do you think you could sail?" he was asked. Bruno had sailed on a shooner one summer in his youth - just day-sailing, no cruising or ocean voyages, but Bruno knew the fundamentals of sailing.
"Sure, I can sail."
"Well, I need a boat delivered to Bermuda... I can offer you all your provisions for the trip, of course, and a return plane ticket plus a little pocket money... at least think about it."
Bruno thought about it, and two days later had consented to the job.
Bruno sailed the boat to Bermuda, still in pain and limited by his injury on the voyage. Upon his arrival, where he was required to stay aboard the fully-provisioned boat for a time, Bruno discovered his pain and injuries were nothing that all the rum in Bermuda couldn't cure.
When his pocket money ran out, Bruno cashed in his plane ticket. When vacated from the boat by the arrival of the boat's owner, Bruno's employer offered to loan Bruno money for a new plane ticket. Bruno decided not to accept the loan, and to stay in Bermuda.
Out of cash, with no family or friends and few acquaintances on the island, Bruno found serviceable accommodations underneath a dock on the beach...
Signs in front of a Main Street residence indicate that shrimp season is now running into election season.
Fresh shrimp and candidates for elective office get equal billing in Ponce's yard.
While the message is clear on the Presidential ticket, the signs suggest possible household disagreement on the race for North Carolina House District 3; Norman Sanderson (R) is running against incumbent Alice Underhill (D) for the seat.
A Brown Pelican surveys the Neuse River from its' perch at the end of the Oriental Harbor breakwater
I photographed this brown pelican (one of my favorite subjects) from about twenty feet away as I was sailing around the breakwater in the Bauer dinghy.
Usually birds perching on the breakwater fly away as I sail closer, but this one stayed put, keeping one eye on me and the other on the river.
Workers stretch out "warps" at Garland Fulcher Seafood Co.
These guys are untangling the cables that drag the trawling nets behind shrimp-boats. The cables are called "warps," and the are quite long.
Sometimes I will see workers using forklifts to haul the heavy cables several hundred feet down the streets near the two fish-houses in town because they are too long to stretch out on the property. The man on the left of the picture, with the white galoshes (standard wear for all shrimp-boat and fish-house workers, apparently) is standing across South Water St. from the Fulcher Seafood Co. parking lot
After the warps are stretched out and straightened, they are wound up on reels on the deck of the trawler.
Workers stow and rig trawl nets on shrimp boat docked at Point Pride Seafood (click on picture or here for full size)
I am frequently dumbfounded by the apparent complexity of rigging on the commercial trawlers that inhabit the two Raccoon Creek fish-houses.
The outriggers reaching to the sky, the assorted superstructures, attachments and the miles of cables and rigging remind me of the multiple masts, spars and rigging I've seen on various models of old square-rigged ships (and as described in Patrick O'Brian's Aubry-Maturin books.)
The guy up top was stacking the various nets on which he is standing, and passing lines to the guy down on the deck.
I took this picture from the Bauer dinghy while sailing up Raccoon Creek.
Four commercial trawlers (shrimp-boats) leaving Oriental Harbor as the weekend shrimping curfew ends. (Click on picture for full size)
I was out sailing on the Neuse River in the Bauer dinghy today when these four shrimp-boats left Oriental harbor and headed down the Neuse River for a new week of shrimping. (yes, there are four trawlers in the picture... the second closest one is mostly obscuring the third closest, but you can just see the third's starboard outrigger peeking out just below the second's starboard outrigger...click on picture for full size... or, see all four in today's slide show on sister blog "The Dinghy Dock")
There is a shrimping curfew from Friday midnight to Sunday noon, so on Sunday afternoon most of the commercial shrimp boats leave their weekend berths at Garland Fulcher Seafood Co. and Point Pride Seafood Co. to go out shrimping.
I was sailing near Oriental Marker #1 when these four trawlers started coming out. In reverse order of departure (from closest to furthest in the above photo), they were:
"Amanda Ashley" - 73 foot, 92 tons, owned by Forest H. Williams, Sr., Grantsboro NC
"Goldie Marie" - 73 foot, 93 tons, owned by Chris Fulcher
Mr. Chris Fulcher owns "Point Pride Seafood," while Mr. Sherrill Styron owns "Garland Fulcher Seafood," which can be a bit confusing at first.
The late Garland Fulcher was the local fishing baron and Chris Fulcher's father. Sherrill Styron was Mayor of Oriental for 24 years, and is now a Town Commissioner. I don't know anything about Mr. Forest Williams of nearby Grantsboro.
"Point Pride Seafood" is on the Eastern side of Raccoon Creek (on the right side of the banner/title photo at top of page), while "Garland Fulcher Seafood" is on the Western side (on the left in banner/title photo at top of page.)
"Point Pride Seafood" sits on a property with a very long and interesting history in Oriental... the point of land it is on, at the confluence of Raccoon Creek and the Neuse River, was known as "Chadwick Point" in the late 19th century, and was home to two lumber mills at the time the town was chartered in 1899... one of the mills was owned by Robert Midyette, who in 1873 purchased the 350 acres of land on which the town was founded.
(For some reason, local lore credits Robert Midyette's nephew, "Uncle Lou" Midyette -- half of the namesake of "Lou-Mac Park" -- as the "founder" of Oriental, but my research indicates that Robert Midyette was the actual owner of the land and the real mover and shaker behind the town's creation)
"Raccoon Creek" was also known as the "log pond" when the Chadwick Point lumber mills were operating because "rafts" of logs which had been cut down farther up the local creeks were floated down to Raccoon Creek where they floated while awaiting milling at the Chadwick Point mills.
The Chadwick Point land was eventually purchased by the "Oriental Bulkhead and Improvement Company" in a fascinating (and ultimately disastrous for the OBIC) land development scheme, about which I'm sure I will explain more in a future posting.
Anyway, enough about Oriental history... today it looked like "Goldie Marie" was going shrimping on Garbacon Shoal, just across the Neuse River from Oriental (you can see Goldie Marie in the distance, turning off to starboard), while the others proceeded farther down the Neuse and possibly into Pamlico Sound.
Three commercial trawlers docked at Fulcher Seafood Co. docks in Raccoon Creek, as seen from the deck of the Oriental Yacht Club.
"Betty H.," "Capt. Ryan" and "Capt. Jeff" were docked at Fulcher Seafood Co. this afternoon when I dropped by the "Oriental Yacht Club."
I'll have more to say about the OYC in the future... I need to get some more info so I don't end up telling some lies about it.
It is in some pretty old buildings, though, and it has this funky covered deck sticking out into Raccoon Creek right next to the Fulcher Seafood fish-house and docks, also on Raccoon Creek.
You can see the very end of the OYC deck, with it's peaked roof, on the extreme left side of the blog title/banner picture at the top of the page.
This is my fist B&W entry in either of my two blogs. I learned photography as a lad and young man with analog cameras... by the time I was in Junior High School I was doing almost exclusively B&W photos and my own processing and printing, which I continued to do for myself and my JHS and High School yearbooks and newspapers.
I kind of gave up photography at some point in college, no longer having access to good darkroom facilities and having failed to maintain / replace my aging and abused cameras and equipment.
As I re-entered the hobby in the digital age, I adapted to color photography, which was quite expensive back in the analog days, but now is just as inexpensive as B&W... As they say, film sure is cheap nowadays.
Now I have been seeing a lot of great B&W work on "City Daily Photo" blogs, and decided to give digital B&W a try for a while... not exclusively, mind you, but now that I have figured out how to switch the cameras to B&W mode, I expect to be doing a bit more...
Now I just have to figure out how to switch my brain and eyes to B&W mode; I hope it's something like riding a bicycle.
Menhaden (a type of fish) schooling next to the Hodges Street causeway over Raccoon Creek (next to Town Dock).
The menhaden invasion continues... Untold millions of menhaden minnows have thronged area creeks this summer, thriving in their estuaries.
The enormous schools of menhaden minnows create "boiling" effects along creek shores and docks. Especially on calm days, when the wind is not creating waves, the water everywhere seems to shimmer as the never-ending schools of tightly packed menhaden create surface turbulence.
I did take a video of the menhaden, since the still picture does not quite capture their frenetic nature:
All I Know About Menhaden (at least I think it's interesting):
Local crabbers (recreational and commercial) and recreational fishers use menhaden for bait. It is extremely easy to catch many hundreds of the 1 to 2 inch minnows simply by tossing a cast net from the shore.
People don't eat menhaden in their natural fish form, but commercial menhaden fisheries produce commercially successful proteins and oils extracted from the fish, as I learned last summer when I visited Reedville, Virginia.
Reedville, VA is home to the only menhaden fishing fleet on the Atlantic Ocean, and to a large processing plant that converts about 200,000 Tons of menhaden (over 500 Million individuals) a year into fishmeal and oil for use in a wide variety of products.
Like Oriental, Reedville is a small town dominated by a large commercial fishing fleet. Unlike the Oriental fleet, which concentrates on shrimping and some scalloping, the Reedville fleet is 100% dedicated to menhaden, which it harvests in enormous quantities.
While there, I spent a couple of hours at the Reedville Fisherman's Museum, which is essentially a propaganda outlet for the commercial menhaden industry (though they do also have an impressive floating collection of wooden boats, including one of about 30 surviving Chesapeake Bay "Skipjack" sailing oyster boats, which the museum continues to operate for charters and tours... all in all, well worth visiting.)
When you enter the museum, the docent immediately shunts you into a small room to watch a ten minute video about commercial menhaden fishing (the museum has now posted the video on YouTube, so I have embedded it below in this post)
Once properly indoctrinated, you are allowed wander the halls of the museum, which feature a pretty amazing photographic history of the industry in action, as well as scale models depicting key technological developments that have led to today's frighteningly large catches of the fish.
The modern menhaden fleet consists of about 10 "steamer" ships, each of which carries two smaller "purse-seine boats"...
When one of the fleet's associated airplanes spots one of the gigantic menhaden schools from the air, the steamer heads that way and launches the purse seine boats.
The purse seine boats each take one end of a 1500-foot purse seine net and encircle a portion of the school then close the bottom of the net, trapping the fish... The area within the net may only be a tiny piece of the overall school, but will result in a catch of up to 300,000 menhaden.
The fish are then pumped out of the nets by the steamers (using giant vacuum tubes that are lowered into the trapped mass.) When their holds are filled, the purse seine boats are brought back aboard and the steamers head back to the processing plant at Reedville.
At the plant, the fish is "cooked" and pressed, separating it into "liquor" (water and oil) and "cake" (solid fish meal). If you are ever in Reedville, you will immediately know if the plant is cooking, as an odor-you-would-not-believe pervades the air downwind of the plant... make sure to anchor or tie up on the windward side of the stacks! (Crazy Crab Restaurant and Marina is recommended, so long as the wind is not out of the south)
The dry meal is used, among other things, as a protein for livestock and pet foods. (take a deep whiff of a can of fish food flakes, or while in the cat food aisle at Pet Smart and you will have a small clue as to the odor that emanates from the processing plant)
The oil is mostly exported to Europe for use as cooking oil/margarine/shortening for human foods (as the Reedville Fisherman's Museum film points out, if you've ever been to France and enjoyed their croissants, likely cooked with menhaden oil), but because the American market has so far not embraced menhaden as a food oil it is instead used here for industrial products like paint and cosmetics.
If you only watch the Reedville Museum's film (embedded below) you might think, as the narrator asserts, that it is indeed:
"the perfect commercial fish... fishermen don't value them except as bait [not good eating, plus they are toothless phytoplankton eaters not catchable with hook and line so sports fishers don't care about them]... they are plentiful, self-renewing, usable in a variety of ways and catchable in large quantities without accidentally killing other valuable fish that people want to eat or catch for sport."
(Video from the Reedville Fisherman's Museum, Reedville, VA)
Some conservationists and sports fishers, however, complain that because menhaden are a significant link between plankton and larger predatory marine and avian life, the large-scale removal of their protein from the ecosystem can only have damaging effects on predator populations such as striped bass, bluefish, mackerel, flounder, tuna, drum , sharks, egrets, ospreys, seagulls, northern gannets, pelicans, herons, etc... Some allege that commercial menhaden fishing has even led or contributed to an alarming increase in appearances of lesion-causing mycobacteriosis and Pfiesteria among menhaden predators such as bass and rockfish.
The U.S. Dept. of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects that this year the 10 steamers of the Reedville-based Atlantic menhaden fleet will bring in close to 200,000 Tons of menhaden! (see NOAA report)
According to NOAA, the combined Gulf and Atlantic menhaden fleets landed 454,000 metric tons (1.39 BILLION pounds) of the fish last year.
I won't bother linking to the multitude of sources discussing the debate over whether menhaden are being over-fished to the detriment of other species (and whether that is even possible)... if you are interested, you can google and find tons of discussion on the subject, most of which appears in the form of defensive discussions from the commercial fishing interests.
I found another menhaden fishing video on YouTube, very different from the pre-packaged corporate promo like the video from the Reedville museum... This vedeo was apparently made by one or more commercial menhaden fishermen (accompanied by Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing")... Oddly, these guys are fishing off Cape May, NJ, and the boats are not the large "steamers" of the Reedville fleet... not sure where they are from, but it looks like they use the two trawlers for the purse-seine operation... one of the trawlers carries a smaller boat (the loading-the-boat scene is my favorite part), but this is not like the huge Reedville steamers each carrying two 20 foot steel-hulled purse-seine boats.
These guys clearly enjoyed making the video for fun. It's also clear from the video that these guys work hard catching bunk/pogies/menhaden, and that they love being fishermen working the waters. Check it out:"bunker fishing cape may (atlantic menhaden)" video.
Boxes of "Fresh Seafood," each containing a bushel or thereabouts of Shrimp from Pamlico Sound, await pickup on the loading dock of a local fish-house (Garland Fulcher Seafood).
One of the commercial shrimp trawlers (the "Captain Jeff") peeks through the passageway while tied up at the fish-house dock.
Trucks of all sizes come in to pick up fresh-off-the-boat shrimp from Oriental's two fish-houses, mostly on the weekends when the boats come in to unload.
I'll try to do some more photos on the whole process of boats coming in, unloading and re-provisioning, and of the catches being processed.
A sad reality is that the very survivals of Oriental's two fish-houses (Garland Fulcher Seafood and Point Pride Seafood) are under threat from a host of factors, including global competition, diminished fishing stocks (and corresponding increased catch regulation), high fuel prices (upwards of $50,000.00 just to fill the tanks of a small commercial trawler), real estate values/land taxes that have led to the closing of so many fish-houses along the coast that boats have to go farther and farther (costing more non-fishing time and fuel) between fishing grounds and someplace to unload their catches.
Anyway, I am told that at least this year the size of the catch is larger than last year... and that last year's catch was larger than anyone has seen in a long time.
Look for future posts in what I suppose is becoming "this series."
Trails of light left by small boats shrimping in Oriental Harbor.
Sunday through Friday is shrimping time in NC, and Oriental Harbor is no exception.
There is a shrimping curfew from Friday midnight to Sunday noon, which is why there are dozens of large commercial trawlers docked in the harbor on the weekend (as seen in the banner photo at the top of this blog), and almost none during the week... Local lore has it that the Sunday noon ending time is so commercial shrimping crews can go to church, which is a bit of a laugh...
The small boat shrimpers circle around in a complex dance around Oriental Harbor and the channel into the Neuse River, towing their nets and periodically stopping to haul their nets and separate their catch... shrimp are kept, while untold hordes of mullet, menhaden and other minnows so prolific in local estuaries are unceremoniously dumped overboard (usually dead or dying).
Sunday night sees the heaviest small shrimper traffic of the week, with a dozen to twenty or so boats working the waters.
After sunset the boats putter around in almost complete darkness, most of the time with only their navigational lights on... Spotlights are used intermittently to illuminate obstacles (shoreline, other shrimping boats, anchored sailboats, channel markers, bridge piers, and the buoys that float above the ends of each boat's net), and deck lights turn on when it is time to haul in the full nets and separate the catch. All these lights contributed to today's photo.
The soft glow in the sky on the right side of today's photo comes from the lights of Beaufort and Morehead City, about 20 miles to the South. You can barely see the glow at night with the naked eye, but it becomes more pronounce in this time exposure photo.
Some of the boats have music playing on board; tonight I heard some AC/DC and Led Zeppelin as the boats passed near the bridge from which I was shooting pictures.
Technical info: this picture was taken with a Canon Rebel XTI, with the following settings: ISO 400, f.5.6, with exposure time of just under 8 minutes.
While sailing around in the Neuse River today we heard the Coast Guard talking to the Captain of "Southern Lady" on the VHF radio... soon after "Southern Lady" came right by us on the way to Beaufort, being towed by "Captain James II."
"Amazing Grace" isn't out shrimping today... she is tied up at Point Pride Seafood with a maimed port-side outrigger.
Shrimp trawlers suspend nets, attached with cables, from the boat's two outriggers, which are lowered into horizontal positions for trawling... The boats are rigged so that the nets sweep along just above the bottom of the river or sea, while bottom-crawling cables called "ticklers" prompt the bottom-dwelling shrimp to swim up into the paths of the nets.
The vessels also tow large wooden "doors" that act as underwater wings to spread the two ends of the net wide apart to increase the catch area (they do indeed look like doors, from cottage-sized doors to cathedral-sized doors... you can see one hanging from the rigging above the aft deck on the starboard side of this trawler).
The outriggers also provide stability to the vessel the same way a tightrope walker uses a balancing pole. They lower the outriggers into horizontal positions once the vessel is underway, even when they are not trawling with the nets.
I understand that essentially identical commercial vessels can also "troll" for fish by using such outriggers to suspend numerous fishing lines with baited hooks as the boat pulls them through the water... Such boats are called "trollers" rather than "trawlers," and their outriggers are known as "troll poles"... slowly traveling with baited lines is called, not surprisingly, "trolling."
Most of the commercial trawlers operating out of slips at Oriental harbor's two fish-houses ("Fulcher Seafood" and "Point Pride Seafood") are shrimp trawlers, at least at this time of year.
However it works, this shrimping season so-far promises to be a huge one, from what I hear on the street.
By evening, the damaged outrigger had been removed.
Along the "Inner Banks" of North Carolina...where everyone lives at the end of the road, and every road ends at the water!
Humans: 875... Sailboats: 3,000 View Oriental, NC in a larger map
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Capt. Hodges circles Jenny back around in Raccoon Creek
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