The North Carolina House will not take up the Senate's proposed ban on inshore shrimp trawling, Republicans decided Wednesday afternoon.
Commercial fishermen erupted in cheers when House Republicans emerged from their caucus meeting around 2:45 p.m. and announced the decision.
Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, said it wasn't even close.
"The House of Representatives did what we were sent here to do, and that's to represent the people. The vote was very strong, to kill that bill," Kidwell told reporters.
Last week, senators inserted the trawling ban into House Bill 442 and quickly passed it, with only four coastal Republicans opposed. H.B. 442 was originally written to open recreational fishing seasons for flounder and red snapper in state waters.
"We sent that wonderful bill to the Senate, and they put a poison pill in it," Kidwell said.
The rewritten bill would have outlawed shrimp trawling except in Atlantic Ocean waters at least a half-mile offshore, matching regulations in Virginia and South Carolina.
Proponents, including Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said it would help protect the millions of fish that die each year after being caught in shrimp nets dragged through inshore waters.
"It's a policy issue that probably has been delayed for a long period of time. Should have been done a while back," Berger told reporters Tuesday.
Shrimpers oppose ban
Commercial fishermen descended on Raleigh to lobby against the bill, saying 75% of North Carolina shrimp is caught in areas that would be subject to the ban.
Organizers said hundreds of people showed up Tuesday, and several dozen returned Wednesday.
Nate Ellison, of Beaufort, was one of them.
"I'm a shrimp boat owner, fifth generation shrimper, and not willing to let it die. So we had to come stand up for what was right," Ellison told the N.C. Newsroom.
Karen Willis Amspacher traveled from Harkers Island. She's a longtime advocate for local fisheries and received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine from Gov. Josh Stein on Wednesday.
"This is not just the shrimpers and their wives. This is a whole community," she said. "Without shrimp, the fish houses cannot operate. Shrimp is the largest commodity they have."
The state awarded 270 commercial shrimp licenses in 2023. Those shrimpers hauled in over 6.5 million pounds of shrimp, worth an estimated $14.1 million, according to N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries statistics.
Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, was one of the bill's sharpest critics. Hanig was outside the House Republicans' meeting room when they emerged with the news.
"The North Carolina Senate tried to do something underhanded, and the people of North Carolina got up and stood against it. And this is the way democracy is supposed to work, right here," he said.
Stein has not responded to multiple requests for comment on the legislation.
Recreational flounder, snapper fishing also in the bill
The other provisions of H.B. 442 would have expanded recreational fishing seasons through 2029, including:
- A six-week season for southern flounder.
- Year-round season for red snapper.
The Division of Marine Fisheries typically makes those calls, not the General Assembly.
Both species have had extremely short seasons in recent years because biologists consider them overfished, meaning the populations are too small to sustain themselves and could collapse.
That's been frustrating for some of the state's recreational fishers, who number in the hundreds of thousands.
At the end of this week, the General Assembly is expected to break for most of the summer, leaving that portion of the legislation's future unclear.
State biologists said earlier this year that the 2025 recreational southern flounder season will likely last two to four weeks.
