43
Organic Roast Chickens,
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(910) 679-4216
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it mostly was when I was growing up. Fishing
or shrimping. Trust me, it ain’t like it used
to be. It’s changed so much. You’ve got more
people and more business. You’ve got the
Marines. You’ve got people that work on base.
A little bit of everything.”
At one time there were at least seven fish
houses and a lot of boats supplying them with
shrimp. Now there’s the three on the New
River with the shrimp boats tied up outside
and Grant’s Oyster House up Mill Creek, and
a handful of boats.
“There used to be a lot of boats come out
here,” Hostetler says. “It used to be 16, 17
boats at a time. We’d work right along the
beach here. But it got so sorry people started
getting out of it.”
Times have changed. High fuel prices and
what the shrimpers see as often draconian regu-lations
have altered the town and the industry.
“One of the biggest things that’s changed is
it used to be I could take flounder nets with
me,” John Norris says. “You can’t do both
now. You’ve got to get a permit to do anything
anymore. If I go rock shrimping, I’ve got to
have a rock shrimp permit. If I go flounder-ing,
I’ve got to have a flounder permit. What
they’re doing is making it so you can only do
one thing.”
Other proposed or rumored regulations
have the shrimpers worried. Liston Norris says
they want to keep the boats at least three miles
from shore because the bycatch is bringing
sharks too close to the beach.
“Every little thing that is bad in the water
gets blamed on us,” he says. “We get a bum
rap. They act like we’re just out there to do
harm. I don’t know a fisherman that’s out to do
harm.”
Buddy Davis has heard about restrictions in
one of the most fertile spots.
“They’re trying to close Pamlico Sound
now,” he says. “They want to put regulations
on it, three days a week. People can’t work
three days a week. I think there’ll be shrimp
right on and on and on, but you never know
about the laws they’re going to pass.”
Epic has your dinner covered!
Epic Food Co. @ The Forum
1113 Military Cutoff Road
www.epicfood.co