Commercial shrimpers in the sounds of North Carolina received an overwhelming vote of confidence Monday, Aug. 7 with a unanimous decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals affirming a lower court ruling dismissing complaints against shrimp trawling under the Clean Water Act.
The case stems from a 2020 complaint filed by recreational fishermen, Joseph William Albea, David Anthony Sammons, Capt. Seth Vernon, Capt. Richard Andrews, Dwayne Bevell and the North Carolina Fisheries Reform Group.
The Reform Group states on its website that its mission, in part, is “in association with our conservation partners, to change how the State of North Carolina manages our public trust marine resources. We will support the implementation of a new comprehensive management plan to restore our fisheries back to the world-class fishers that they once were.”
The plaintiffs contend that shrimp trawlers in Pamlico Sound are violating the Clean Water Act by engaging in two types of unpermitted activity, “throwing bycatch overboard and disturbing sediment with their trawl net.”
In writing the unanimous dismissal, Appeals Court Judge Julius Richardson concluded that while the Clean Water Act does forbid unpermitted discharge of a pollutant, returning fish that are non-targeted and inadvertently caught in the trawl nets, known as bycatch, do not qualify as pollutants.