A North Carolina court has ruled that the evidence “overwhelmingly” shows the state government has failed to adequately protect coastal fisheries and people’s ability to fish them.
That failure, according to a a 17 August ruling from Judge Bryan Collins of the Wake County Superior Court, represents a breach of the state's "obligations under the public-trust doctrine and the North Carolina Constitution."
“With this ruling, we are calling on the general public, our elected officials, our scientific community, and state fisheries managers to join together with us, roll up our sleeves, and commit to doing the hard work necessary to restore our coastal fisheries resources for the benefit of all citizens and future generations,” Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina (CCA NC) Executive Director David Sneed said in a release. “Coastal fishing in our great State could have such a bright future, and we owe it to our children and grandchildren to make it a reality.”
CCA NC, along with 86 citizen plaintiffs, first sued the state in 2020, alleging that the state’s coastal fisheries were deteriorating due to inadequate state management.
In 2022, an appeals court again ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, noting that their allegations showed “the state did not properly manage the fisheries so as to forever preserve the fish populations for the benefit of the public." The appeals court then remanded the case back to the superior court to determine whether the facts did indeed back the plaintiffs' claim.
The plaintiffs argued in their filings that the state was not adequately collecting data on how many fish were being removed from the water, noting that for decades the state’s trip ticket system did not require commercial fishers to report their unsold catch. The court also found that the state did not collect reliable data on discards or bycatch.
“This lack of necessary data has resulted in stock assessments that have a risk of being too optimistic – that is, the potential to show fish stocks as doing better than they actually are – and has contributed to the chronic failure of management plans to rebuild stocks,” Collins concluded.
In his lengthy 190-page ruling, Collins lambasted state management of coastal fisheries.
“On this trial record, reflecting approximately six weeks of evidence, and after carefully weighing all of the evidence presented, the Court concludes, based on the preponderance of the evidence, including the evidence described in the Court's extensive findings above, that the State has failed to meet its ‘obligation to manage and protect fisheries for the benefit of the general public’ as required under the public-trust doctrine […] failed to ‘keep fisheries safe from injury, harm, or destruction for all time’ […] and failed to ‘protect the harvestable fish population for the benefit of all its citizenry,” Collins wrote.
In summarizing the evidence presented to the court, Collins noted that Senior Executive Director of the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Greg Stunz testified that North Carolina fisheries management was “the worst” he’d seen in the U.S.
Collins also relied heavily on the testimony of Colonel Carter Witten, who led the state’s Marine Patrol. Witten told the court that severe staffing limitations prevented the patrol from enforcing state law and addressing the violations officers saw “regularly.”
The North Carolina state government argued before the court that there were too many data gaps to prove plaintiffs' allegations, but Collins called that argument “specious,” pointing out that it is the state’s duty to collect adequate data to show it is managing public trust fish.
“The data gaps the court has found in this case are themselves evidence of management failures by the state and not lack of evidence from Plaintiffs,” he said.
According to CCA NC, the next step will be additional proceedings before the court to determine adequate remedies to improve state management and protect coastal resources.
