This month’s newsletter includes feature articles about the herring fishery in the Albemarle Sound and one of our local companies and official sponsor of the festival, Native Shorelines.
History of The Albemarle Sound Part 1:
A Look At Our Past
This monthly newsletter will serve partially to explore topics regarding the Albemarle Sound and surrounding waters. This will include the history surrounding the water, the health of the marine fishery, and what can be done to help. One of the primary reasons for creating Clear Living Waters and the Albemarle Rock Fish Festival was to spread awareness about environmental concerns regarding the Albemarle Sound.
It seems best to start this series with a little bit of history on the Albemarle Sound, what we know from our earliest recorded records and how it has been a life source as well as how we have exploited it historically, and the impacts of these actions.
As the first in a series of articles about our sound, we have chosen to provide a historical summary. We decided to start by describing the fisheries that used to thrive in the area, particularly the herring fishery, for which Edenton is most known. However, future articles will discuss different time periods and main events.
The information in this section was gathered from various online sources, which are cited below.
Although this may be surprising to hear now, the Albemarle Sound was once described as being as clear as the Caribbean. The Albemarle Rock Fish Festival initiative was partially inspired by the watercolors painted by John White ca. 1585-86 of the Algonquin natives fishing with spear gigs in clear waters teeming with fish, the likes of which no living soul has likely ever seen. We started to wonder, what changed?
The history starts off with the Algonquin natives, who used to live off of the abundance of fish teeming in the water (coastalreview.org). During the colonial period, fish were essential to natives' and colonists' lives. We will do a feature going more in-depth into Native American tribes from the area in future pieces.
In the mid-1700s, commercial fishing operations began in the Albemarle Sound. From the beginning until the mid-1800s, fishing was done using "seines."
"At the height of the fishing season, which usually came around the middle of April, these huge seines would bring in over 100,000 herring, along with hundreds of shad, rockfish, and perch, all in a single haul. The average catch for horse-powered seines was 1,500,000 herring" (gowildnc.com).
Interestingly, these seines were replaced by smaller nets called pound nets or dutch nets. These new nets were introduced to Albemarle Sound by a Dutchman named John Pentrose Hettrick who first came to Albemarle Sound as a Union soldier during the war.
"The new nets were much smaller and less expensive than the antebellum seines, which often stretched over a mile in length and, before steam power, depended solely on enormous crews of enslaved and free black fishermen. With pound nets, on the other hand, a single crew of five men could tend a dozen of them daily" (davidcecelski.com).
By 1896, 0ver 1100 pound nets in the Sound and rivers had replaced the haul seines, and "fishermen were catching over 20 million po
unds annually." Due to the number of nets in the rivers, the passage of herring was disturbed. The Vann Law was enacted in 1905 which "required fishermen to leave a channel in the Sound to allow fish to migrate to their natal waters for spawning" (aheronsgarden.com).
"While the number of the old seine fisheries declined with the end of slavery and the rise of pound netting, the introduction of steam power revolutionized the remaining seine fisheries. In 1869 Capt. Peter Warren, of Edenton, invented a steam seine and first put it to use at J. G. and Edward Wood’s Drummond Point fishery, which was located near the mouth of the Yeopim River, not far from Greenfield. The new technique employed a pair of steam engines, contained in engine houses like the one in this photograph." This photograph shows the engine house at Greenfield fishery circa 1905. "One of the 3 and ½-inch thick hauling ropes ran from the sea-end fishing flat to this structure, where an engine with a steam drum hauled one end of the seine ashore"(davidcecelski.com).
Even after the Vann Law was enacted which required a path to be left for fish to travel for spawning, the fishery continued to decline. "During the 1950s total catches were about 11 to 12 million annually. By the 1970s, they had dropped to about 8 million, and in 1993, down to only one million."
"In 2006 a moratorium on commercial fishing was declared in North Carolina." However, the fish did not come back (aheronsgarden.com).
"The herring fishery suffered a slow decline during much of the 20th century and it collapsed completely in the 1980s and ’90s." The decline was a product of "increasingly poor water quality, grave habitat loss, and overfishing in both inland waters and out in the Atlantic." (coastalreview.org)
The herring were also intensely impacted by pollution from agriculture, municipalities, and industry (aheronsgarden.com).
This very brief overview of what happened to the herring fishery is a great way to exemplify the lowered health of the Albemarle Sound throughout history and how human impact affected and still affects our water. Next month, we will take a look at the earliest written records of interactions with the Sound.
Works Cited
https://aheronsgarden.com/2021/06/21/albemarle-sound-voyage-through-centuries-ix/
https://coastalreview.org/2021/06/our-coast-the-herring-workers/
https://gowildnc.com/History-Commercial-Fishing.aspx
https://davidcecelski.com/2018/04/05/herring-week-day-12-the-last-seine-fisheries/
2022 Festival T-Shirts Still Available!
Pick up at 307 South Broad Street
Available in blue & white
$20, payable by Venmo, cash, or check
Message us by email, Facebook, or Instagram to see if we have your size and color, or just stop by!
Festival Updates
In May of 2022, we had the 2nd annual Albemarle Rock Fish Festival!
Mark your calendars, the 3rd annual Albemarle Rock Fish Festival is scheduled for May 19th and 20th, 2023! The festival will be held at the same venue, and all the same bands have agreed to return! We are in the process of planning the specifics, but we want you to know that there will be a pig picking this year on Friday, so make sure to come early next year.
Go ahead and make your accommodation arrangements EARLY now that we know the date!
Board Member Announcement
Some exciting news for Clear Living Waters! We are pleased to announce that we have recently added 3 valuable new members to our board.
Chris Powell: A lifelong sportsman and lover of the outdoors, Chris Powell formerly worked for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission as associate editor of Wildlife in North Carolina magazine. He currently works in marketing and public relations for a power company.
Flint Harding: Flint has supported fisheries management and water quality projects for many years. Professionally he works in the biotechnology sector and has a BS in Chemical Engineering from NC State
Catie McKinney: Catie is a student studying Anthropology, Writing, and Marketing at High Point University. Her love for the environment and her hometown along with her goal of working in the non-profit sector in the future makes Catie a great new member. Along with Catie, her mother, Mary-Margaret McKinney, an environmental specialist, inventor, and PhD student at East Carolina University will be a co-board member.
Thank you to our new members for agreeing to be a part of the initiative, and we can't wait to see what the future brings!
July Sponsor Feature
For the Clear Living Waters newsletter, we will be choosing a different sponsor to feature each month. This month's featured sponsor is Native Shorelines, formerly RS Shorelines, a division of Restoration Systems, LLC. Restoration Systems is a nationwide leader in environmental mitigation banking. Mitigation banking is the preservation, enhancement, restoration or creation of a wetland, stream, or habitat conservation area which offsets or compensates for expected adverse impacts to similar nearby ecosystems.
Restoration System’s most recent division and sponsor of the Albemarle Rock Fish Festival is Native Shorelines, the only company in the state of North Carolina that was created exclusively with the intent of doing work with living shorelines. Native Shorelines is a young company that started in early 2020. Despite their youth, they have already installed over 3 miles of living shorelines in North Carolina across 75 properties. Most projects are on private shorelines in the Bogue Sound area, however, they currently have clients from the middle peninsula of Virginia to the North Carolina - South Carolina border. They anticipate having completed over 100 projects over the course of 2022 with the help of cost-share assistance recently allocated by the North Carolina General Assembly. Native Shorelines works with the NC Coastal Federation to help landowners take advantage of this cost-share assistance.
You may be wondering, what is a living shoreline?
A living shoreline is an environmentally and economically superior alternative to a hardened shoreline such as a bulkhead or sea wall. They are made up of primarily natural materials and plants and absorb the energy from waves instead of reflecting, reduce erosion, soften the transition between land and water, improve aquatic habitats and allow for marsh growth, and filter pollutants and runoff. Living shorelines can improve water quality, provide fisheries habitat, increase biodiversity, and promote recreation. They are made with natural materials and integrated with the landscape, so they act as natural barriers to wave energy. They trap sediments, allowing marsh to grow behind them as sea levels rise.
Native Shorelines works with private and public landowners to determine if a living shoreline is feasible for their property. If so, working with native shorelines is a turn-key process. As such, they handle the design and permitting of the shoreline while working to acquire available grant money that can offset the cost of the project. They will consult to determine feasibility, assist with finding funding, and will install the appropriate shoreline and so maintenance if necessary. It is typically a very quick process. In most cases, a living shoreline can be installed within weeks of a landowner's first inquiry.
Native Shorelines specializes in oyster shell bags and QuickReef ™, however, they provide consultation for landowners on a wide variety of shorelines. Each property is unique, and so Native Shorelines works with each landowner to determine the best living shoreline option for their specific needs.
QuickReef ™ is Native Shoreline’s proprietary product, invented by Mary-Margaret McKinney and Worth Creech in 2021. This patent pending system is comprised of units made of native limestone and oyster shell mixed with a small amount of cement and arranged in shallow waters in a way that absorbs wave energy and creates habitat. In areas where oysters live, they will attach to the units. This product creates a more environmentally friendly process while also creating marine habitat and protecting the shoreline. The unique arrangement of the units allows for habitat creation not just around the shoreline, but within the structure as well, making it truly living inside and out. Clear Living Waters deeply values the sponsorship of Native Shorelines due to our mutual concern for the environment and water health. For more information or a consultation, please see their website at www.nativeshorelines.com!
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