plants, steel plants all the way up the
middle of the city. W hile they’re trying
to clean it up now, for years they dumped
raw sewerage into the river. T hat will
always do away with us quicker than the
marketing. T here are enough local sales
here that you’d probably get by with.
Sometimes, we get a little bit better than
market price. I’m afraid there’s just not
going to be any more shrimp.”
A side from pollution, over-fishing has
also proved problematic. Y ears ago, C ape
Fear and other sensitive areas were closed
early in the season to allow developing
shrimp to grow. N ow, G eorge says, closures
are rare and too many commercial and recreational
shrimpers don’t use discretion in
the all-important nursery areas. T he shrimp
46
WBM october 2011
are caught before they can continue the
cycle; much less grow big enough to sell.
G eorge says that while he used to
debunk the disappearing shrimp theory that
G alloway spoke of as a glorified myth, after
years of watching the shrimp size and count
dwindle, he’s now willing to wager that in
ten years there will be no shrimp to be had
in this area.
Potter is more optimistic. “Shrimp can
lay up to 250,000 eggs every three days and
they have a life span of twelve to eighteen
months. T hey reproduce so fast and with
such volume that I’d say they are pretty
resilient.”
Potter says that although he and his
wife, A pril, have to work more for less,
given new stringent federal regulations
geared to decrease by-catch in shrimp nets,
the dwindling shrimp population which
he attributes to pollution and a voluntarily
more sustainable approach to the business,
that it’s all worth it.
“O ur customers appreciate it,” Potter
says.
Standing on the deck of the Cape Point
docked in front of the quaint yellow seafood
shack, with its towering outriggers
overhead, lines neatly taught, A pril Potter
lunges slightly toward their exploring toddler,
A .J. She says she misses her twelvehour
stints on the Cape Point.
“I never had trouble sleeping when I got
off the boat. W alking, maybe, but never
sleeping!”
She goes on to to say that she attributes
their methods — pulling the nets every 45
minutes instead of the standard three hours,
constantly adjusting the nets to keep them
six to eight inches off the bottom — to the
quality product they unload at the end of
the day.
“O ur customers accuse us of dipping our
shrimp in syrup,” she says.
Jonathon Broome, recreational shrimper
out of C arolina Beach, formerly a federal
government employee can relate. Shrimp
don’t have to smell shrimpy, he says.
“C ustomers have asked me why my
shrimp don’t smell like shrimp” he says,
chuckling. “A lot of people don’t know the
truth about the shrimp market.” H e refers
to the freshness of the shrimp.
Shrimp can sit on boats, in markets and
on trucks for weeks at a time, treated with
Royce Potter and his wife, April, run Potter’s Seafood in Southport with their
15-month-old son, A.J., in tow.