Groundwork
Local individuals step in to help a world crisis
By Dana Sachs
One day, in the heart of Athens, Greece, my friend Stephanie Meyers and I walked into the storeroom of Jasmine School, an abandoned building 400 mostly Syrian refugees now call home, and saw a case of fresh milk sitting out on a table. At Jasmine School, people sleep in flimsy camping tents in the empty classrooms. They bathe beneath a showerhead jerry-rigged next to the toilets. They get their meals, once a day, from a tiny outdoor kitchen, where a small team of refugees cook for everyone. In other words, homeless, war-weary, and with no certainty about the future, these people are doing their best to survive.
“Why isn’t this cold?” I asked.
Abdullah, a 20-year-old Syrian law student who fled his country and abandoned his studies, now spends his days organizing supplies for the residents. He opened the refrigerator to show us the reason for the warm milk. The refrigerator wasn’t cold at all.
“What happened?” Stephanie asked.
Abdullah speaks rudimentary English, but he can get his point across. “No good. Old,” he said. Jasmine’s children would not have milk to drink that day.
I glanced at Stephanie. “What do you think?”
She looked at the dead fridge, the spoiled milk, and Abdullah, who, at 20, had the strained face of someone already too familiar with disappointment. Then she said, “Let’s go buy a new fridge.”
That day, we went on a shopping trip with the refugee leaders of Jasmine School. At the Greek equivalent of Best Buy, we bought a new refrigerator/freezer, a deep freezer, and a laptop computer. Now, the kids at Jasmine have cold milk, meat stored for the future, and a computer that recently projected the hit film Minions in the outdoor courtyard for movie night.
They have these things because people far away cared enough to help.
Struggling through its own devastating economic crisis, Greece has few resources to deal with this influx of 58,000 or so Middle Eastern refugees who fled war back home and became stuck in Greece in February when Macedonia closed its border and blocked their route into Europe. The European Union has been woefully slow to help. One important source of relief, then, has come from an unlikely place — an international network of concerned individuals and small-scale relief teams who provide aid directly.
I first heard about this independent aid community last year from a California friend, Kathryn, planning to volunteer herself. The more she told me about the volunteer effort — people were providing food, distributing clothing, teaching English, even rescuing refugees from boats that capsized off the Greek coast — the more I wanted to take part in the effort. There was one hitch, though. I don’t have major lifesaving skills and couldn’t justify spending as much as $2,000 to fly to Europe and hand out meals at a soup kitchen. Wouldn’t that money go to better use, I asked myself, if I donated the cost of the trip to a reputable charity, and stayed home? When I mentioned my concerns to Kathryn, she suggested that I do what she had already done, set up a crowdfunding page and tell friends and family that I’d use any money they gave to help these small-scale relief efforts.
The plan worked well beyond what either of us had imagined. By the time we left for Greece, dozens of people had made donations. Once we arrived, and started sending back reports, people gave even more. In one Facebook post, for example, I spelled out the needs specifically: “$100 will buy three strollers. $100 will buy 35 bottles of infant formula for women who can’t nurse. $250 will buy a trunk-load of diapers. $1,700 will pay for 3,000 nutritious meals at 30 cents each.” Within hours of posting that message, more money poured in. In all, we collected some $20,000, and we spent every penny.
People back home, I realized, wanted to help. Constant news of war can make you feel hopeless, and my friends found gratification in doing something positive. No, $100 won’t end the war, but it is no small thing to give a refugee family a stroller, or to make sure that the mother of toddlers has the diapers she needs to get through the day. The holidays bring all sorts of platitudes about charity, but the truth remains: We really do get joy from giving.
After I returned from that first trip, Wilmington philanthropist Bucky Stein called me and said, “Let’s have a fundraiser for the refugees.” Soon, Stephanie Meyers and Jennifer Maraveyias got involved, too. In June, we held an event at Thalian Hall that raised thousands of dollars. By the time I returned to Greece in July — and this time with Stephanie — we had raised another $22,000. Again, we spent every penny.
Dana Sachs is a regular contributor to Salt. To donate to the current campaign (all money raised will be spent in Greece this winter), visit www.youcaring.com/syrian-refugee-relief-555416. For more information, email danasachs@gmail.com.
A Home for Santa
(with a little help from his friends)
By Virginia Holman
Harry Buie’s unofficial job in Carolina Beach is to make people happy. If you live on Pleasure Island or visit regularly, you’ve probably seen him walking around town. He’s the man with the long white beard and the laughing eyes seen swaggering home from a stroll to the grocery store or his job at the local laundromat. He often wears a Santa hat to honor the local schoolchildren, who wave and call out, ‘Hi, Santa!’ on their way to and from school.
Harry has lived on the island, in the same house, since his birth in 1957. His home, a modest 500-square-foot cottage built in the 1940s, sat quietly near Carolina Beach Elementary School while the town around him developed in fits and starts over the last half century. He’s seen the island transform from a sleepy beach and fishing destination to a town with two high-rise hotels, many three-story beach houses outfitted with granite countertops and gleaming fixtures, and a restaurant that requires reservations. Through times of economic exuberance and downturns, Harry and his family continued to live in the tight-knit community of locals just beyond the tourist bustle. For many years, they ran a family business, a bait-and-tackle shop under Snows Cut bridge. They had another business called “Linda’s Drink Stand.” Harry’s brother died suddenly in 1969 and his father passed away in 1974. He and his mother continued on together in the little cottage on Atlanta Avenue for the next 20 years, until her death in 1994. Then it was just Harry in his small home, the town of Carolina Beach, his only remaining family.
In the 1990s, area taxes began to climb, the cost of living rose. Harry continued to work around town at odd jobs, at fast food places, at the laundromat, mowing lawns, and waving and smiling at all who passed his way, spreading good cheer. Despite the hard times, he cultivated a glad heart and brightened the days of those who crossed his path.
Unfortunately for Harry, his income only allowed him to take care of true essentials. He paid his bills and his taxes, but he found himself unable to keep up with the repairs and maintenance of his small home. Here at the coast, that catches up with you quickly: A minor leak left untended turns into a big problem quickly, and over the next decade Harry’s house started to show the toll of the years and the coastal storms. Harry’s neighbor Donna Sloan was walking her granddaughter, Evie, home from school in September when the girl said, “I wish we could fix Santa’s home.” Mrs. Sloan thought this was a fine idea and mentioned it to just the right person, Janeen Williams, the owner and proprietor of Magic Beanz Coffee Shop.
Janeen is connected — many of the regulars at her shop happen to be local residents and homebuilders — so when they came in to grab their morning cup of Joe the next day, Janeen set out a jar and asked them, “Are you going to help us fix Harry Buie’s house?” Within days some of the finest homebuilders on the island, Bryant Bass, Alan Votta, Keith Bloemendaal, Brett Keeler and Laird Flournoy, had signed on to help. The group calls themselves, unofficially, Habitat for Harry. (Though the name is a nod to the well-known Habitat for Humanity, this group of Santa’s elves is entirely independent.)
The first order of business was to see if Harry would allow this group of friends and neighbors to assist him. He’s a man with a lot of pride, but also one who trusts his friends. So he agreed to let the group take a look at what repairs needed to be made. After the group evaluated the home and discussed options, they decided it made the most sense to start from scratch. “It was an older home and had been through a lot,” says Bryant Bass. “We wanted to do it right.” That night, Alan Votta sat down and sketched out a few ideas, and the next day the group met again to talk about how much it would cost to make the project a reality. They set a goal of $50,000 to raze and construct a new 500-square-foot home.
“It happened really fast,” says Brett Keeler. “It took off on social media. Deb LeCompte set up a Facebook page, and soon people wanted to give us money, but we couldn’t take it because we weren’t an official organization. We were scrambling.” Before long, the group was able to set up the fund under the umbrella of the Pleasure Island Revitalization Project. “The Last Resort held a drive-through barbecue one Saturday, and people came through donating $100 and more for a plate.” The event raised $6,100. A silent auction at Bud and Joe’s Sandbar in Kure Beach raised $3,000. Merchants all over town set up donation jars and held raffles. The local paper, The Island Gazette, ran a story, and locals and tourists began donating as well.
“After the Island Gazette piece ran,” says Bryant Bass, “a man with a condo in Carolina Beach called and said he had a window company, and said he’d donate the windows.” Many other businesses, listed at the end of this article, donated as well, providing everything from help with plumbing to razing and hauling away Harry’s old house.
Keith Bloemendaal says there have also been pledges for donations of home furnishings and decorating from a variety of places, including the impeccably decorated local hair salon, Beauty South. “Everybody loves this island and Harry. It’s a real community here.” Harry returns the sentiment. He even wrote a letter to the local paper to express his heartfelt appreciation:
“I feel so blessed that my community is coming together like this to help me. I want to thank everyone for the donations and help. I love each and every one of you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless.”
Hurricane Matthew set everyone behind schedule a little bit, but the group is hopeful that Santa will be in his new home in time for Christmas. And though Santa’s elves still don’t yet have an official name, they plan to form a local nonprofit aimed at providing home repairs and modifications like wheelchair ramps to help elderly and infirm Carolina Beach locals stay in their homes and age in place.
Follow the progress on the Habitat for Harry Facebook page or donate at gofundme.com/savesantashome
Author Virginia Holman, a regular Salt columnist, teaches in the creative writing department at UNC Wilmington.
Turning Grief Into Gratitude
Through Journey 4 Josh lives are being saved
By Nicholas Gray
I first meet Patty Proutey at TheatreNOW. Both avid patrons of our local arts, we were guffawing at the epic roast of one of our city’s favorite thespians. After all the laughter and applause, Patty shares her heart-rending story with me for the first time.
On Dec. 13, 2012, after locking up at the end of a late rehearsal night in the Hannah Block Community Arts Center, Patty’s 19-year-old son, Josh, was accosted at gunpoint in the parking lot. Josh became the victim of a heinous, unwarranted, random crime by four desperate accomplices seeking a short reward — as it turned out, $10 and a sandwich from Jimmy John’s — and perhaps, a sense of power. Josh complied, but one of the young assailants shot him; all four left him to die.
His remembrance candle now burns brightly in the lot of Hannah Block.
What I didn’t know is what happened next, how Patty turned her terrible loss into something quite admirable, given her unimaginable undoing, a nonprofit called Journey 4 Josh. To honor her slain son, Patty uprooted her life, journeying to Wilmington from her home and nursing career in Raleigh. The foundation hopes to change the future of our communities’ at-risk children by funding access to positive extracurricular activities.
Months later, I meet Patty for the second time in a fateful run-in downtown. We noticed a nearby bench and talk for two hours. Patty is graciously full of queries into my own endeavors until the subject changes to my curiosities about Journey 4 Josh.
Launched in January 2014, Journey 4 Josh funds the desires of children from our neighborhoods of Creekwood, Eastbrook, Houston Moore, Rankin Terrace (unfortunately, the list goes on), for whom extracurricular activities are out of reach. From guitar or percussion lessons to acting training, martial arts to organized athletics, J4J sponsors children with the intention of deterring them from future poverty or gang-ridden crime. The idea being, Patty can’t go back in time and save her son or even those with 20-to-life prison sentences, but maybe she can prevent a wasted life. Through funding from Patty’s family, support from local businesses like Slice of Life, Chop’s Deli and Charlie Graingers, online donors and occasional fundraisers, J4J has grown from its inaugural support of four children in year one to a current capacity of 30. Referrals for J4J candidates typically come from the Wilmington Housing Authority or elementary school guidance counselors and coaches. As of yet, no referral has been denied.
When Patty speaks about her mission for Journey 4 Josh, she speaks first about Josh — his grace, his generosity, his kindness, his devoted love of our city and his own passion for the future. Josh was en route to the Marine Corps, taking paramedic classes with the intention of becoming a physician assistant and working abroad in Guatemala.
Then Patty speaks about her “kids” — she is not only their benefactor, she is their friend, mentor, and an active member of their lives. Patty’s mission is clear: “These kids will end up doing more than I could ever do in my lifetime.”
When I meet Patty for the third time at her beautiful downtown home/J4J office for our scheduled interview, she isn’t the Patty I’ve met before. She is quiet, guarded. And it’s likely because I’m there to talk about Patty herself and exactly how she was able to turn her darkest grief into a fountain of gratitude.
Patty mourned for months over Josh’s passing, until finally her other sons, Joe and Carlos (adopted from Guatemala), struck her from her bed. “Why are we not enough?” Joe finally asked. And she woke up. Patty began asking questions: “Why did this happen to Josh?” “How could four people so close in age to Josh be so different from Josh?” “How might I stop this from happening again?”
Throughout the trial, Patty was emotionally reluctant to be in Wilmington, commuting from Myrtle Beach day-to-day over months. But when J4J became a reality, Patty was quick to make Wilmington her home, realizing truly that she had a future to offer, especially here.
As I look around her photo-laden office (a medley of both Josh, Joe, Carlos and her “kids”), I ask Patty what her “kids” know about Josh.
“They know we’ve lost Josh, but that’s not the focus. The focus is what each of them has in common with Josh. And they love that.”
I ask Patty if she is proud of her accomplishments with J4J, and she makes it clear that no praise is due. And then, “But I think Josh would be proud of me. Josh would say, ‘Good job, Mom.’”
For info or to donate, visit journey4josh.org or donate through AmazonSmile, which donates a portion of your everyday Amazon purchases to J4J.
Nicholas Gray is a Wilmington writer of and about theater, film and television.
More Than a Haircut
Meet North Carolina’s haircut hero, who is shaping up the world — and spreading the compassion — one head at a time
By Isabel Zermani
Josh Eudy is built like a G.I. Joe. Or a Ninja Turtle. He talks too fast for dictation and periodically gets up from the picnic table to push his 7-year-old-son, Kaiden, on the tire swing and is back before I can finish writing down what he just said. He’s only been cutting hair for the homeless since April, but it has “blown up.”
He frequently travels across the state from his home in Jacksonville to Charlotte or to a veterans’ home in Asheville to cut hair, often just down the road to Wilmington. His operation is small: a backpack of clippers, scissors, disinfectant spray, an American flag cape — for the recipient to wear, of course. He may be North Carolina’s haircut hero, but insists, “This isn’t about me.” His only thought is to inspire others, how many heads he can cut, how many more if other stylists join him, how a little thing like a haircut can transform people and heal our country’s social divide.
Today, we are in Greenfield Lake Park. We are early for the free dinner at a nearby church by a group called “Vigilant Hope” that has a shower trailer, Josh’s dream. He would love to have a shower trailer with three barber chairs on it; that’s the new goal. In the meantime, Josh does it the old way, on the street — “Hey, I do haircuts” — just like he did in Charlotte the first time.
This spring a friend tagged Josh in a video on Facebook of a guy in London cutting homeless people’s hair. “You’ve just opened up a beast!” he messaged his friend. In his regular life, Josh is a stylist at a high-end salon and is certified in hair extensions for women with medical conditions like alopecia, which causes balding. A helper by nature, this video called to him. While getting a certification in Charlotte, he packed up his gear and went downtown in search of homeless people — “Hey, I do haircuts.” He found a guy who offered to take him to a sleeping spot with people and an outlet for his clippers. “‘OK. Get in my car,’” I said and he didn’t want to at first. I broke the social norm. A white kid inviting this black homeless guy in my car.” They went to a smelly outpost behind a warehouse, Josh plugged in and cut hair for six hours: men, women and children.
Maybe it was because Josh grew up well, in a middle class family, or served in the Army, which is racially diverse, but “I never had a fear of color or a fear of people.” He has an easy “bedside manner” cutting hair on park benches and church folding chairs because he’s struggled. People trust him. There’s no moral hilltop, no agenda. He starts a sentence “whenever I lost everything,” about a time seven years ago when he kicked a pain pill and alcohol habit brought on by severe back surgeries after a fall in the Army. He was couch-surfing and in custody court and hit a wall. He went to a treatment program through the Veterans Administration with other men — “I was never an ‘under the bridge’ drinker, but they were. And I could relate to them.”
Out front of the church, Josh sets up his gear. People start to line up — mostly men. For the most part, each man is reserved, if not stone-faced. In the chair, wrapped in an American flag cape, Josh gets to work on their hair and beards — clippers or scissors — and they open up.
“Where are you staying?” Josh asks each one. A man named Frank has been in the woods seven years. A redheaded man named Philip is also in the woods; he blames substances and “bad decisions.” Tom, from Savannah, has “bad luck.” Two more guys stay in the woods, exhausted by regulations at the shelters, though the mosquitoes get to them — “you ain’t seen nothin’ till you’ve seen Panama.” Another guy stays on a friend’s couch and works seasonally as a house painter. Josh is mid-cut and jokes with him, “We’re going to bring back the rat tail.” Deadpan, the guy one-ups him, boasting, “I had the rat tail.”
One-by-one, faces emerge, relax. They look youthful and cared-for. This is a person who could get a job. This is a person you can ask for directions. For many of the men, it’s practical — all that hair gets hot — but the effects are social. I’m pretty sure one guy could get a girlfriend now. Josh teases him, “You a player, huh?”
One brown-haired guy in a button-down has a job, lives with roommates, but is on the edge — one paycheck away — like a lot of people. Midway through the evening three exuberant neighborhood boys show up wanting “fades” and to get “edged up” before school starts. Army-style, Josh has them do push-ups to earn their fades. Unasked, Kaiden sweeps up the hair piles, a mix of black, brown and red, at the end of the night and the boys jump in and help. They are all surprised at how much weight was taken off.
Follow Josh on Facebook as: Haircuts, Hugs and Hope. The growing group is organizing free community haircut events in Jacksonville, Kinston and soon, Wilmington. He welcomes any barbers and stylists to reach out and join him. He has expanded nationally, cutting hair in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
Fishing for the Future
Out to preserve recreational angling for tomorrow, eighty local card-carrying members of the Recreational Fishing Alliance are the workingman environmentalists of the Cape Fear region
By John Wolfe
At an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning I paddle south, following Orion’s Belt above and the dim silhouette of the man in the kayak ahead of me, across smoked-glass waters of the lower Cape Fear River near Southport. I am going fishing, and to fish a place you must first learn that place, know it better than the face of your lover. You must anticipate what happens there during all phases of the tidal rhythm, or in the murky aftermath of a rain storm, or under the light of a full moon. You must adapt to life’s dynamic conditions if you are to catch the fish that swim in those secret waters.
Of this I know nothing. I am a visitor in this place, which is why I am following the man in the kayak in front of me: Dan George, a wiry, deeply tanned, squinting, Marlboro Light-smoking waterman, true and to the blood. Dan, who moves like a great blue heron across the flats, stalking bait mullet with his cast net hung over his shoulder like a cape. Dan, who possesses the true, tangible knowledge that only comes from many days of sun and wind and salt out here, waist-deep, seriously angling. Dan, who catches enormous, prize-winning fish, who has the trophies to prove it. I’m paddling in one of them now, a blue kayak he won in the Oak Island Classic tournament two years ago. He’s won every kayak he’s ever owned.
As we paddle, Dan tells me about collecting clams in Hewlett’s Creek when he was 13 and selling them for a dime apiece, making more money in one day than most grown men he knew. A pier rat at the tender age of 10, he spent his summer days with “Wilmington’s drunkest,” trading fresh-caught bluefish for Cokes with the anglers at the pier’s end. They used the bluefish he caught as bait for king mackerel, the monarch of inshore sport fishing. This, he says, is where his addiction to fishing began: He witnessed a king strike with such force that it catapulted out of the water and arced through the air, tail still flapping, leaving a shimmering misty rainbow over the surface of the waves. That was it, he said.
Now, Dan serves as kayak liason officer on the board of the Recreational Fishing Alliance of North Carolina (the ostensible reason I’m out here today, to get a better understanding of this group). Today, he is my spirit guide. He has promised to lead me to the state fish of North Carolina: a round-headed, armor-scaled, bulldog-shouldered copper-red-and-cream-colored Sciaenops ocelata, one black lonely spot at the base of the broad tail. A fish as tough and stubborn and beautiful as the Old North state herself, the red drum. It is a fish that must be caught to be believed. We arrive at Dan’s favorite sandbar, cast our lines out, and wait for the strike.
The North Carolina chapter of the Recreational Fishing Alliance incorporated in 2015 as a 503(c)(4) statewide political action organization. They define themselves as a group of recreational fishermen who have come together to lobby, educate and persuade our city, county, state and federal governments to act in the best interest of the fisheries and related industries that support recreational fishing. That’s recreational fishing, importantly distinct from commercial fishing. The RFA is careful to emphasize they have no problem with commercial fishermen — they simply want to see the resource managed in a way that benefits both sides. More fish, they say, and everybody wins.
The RFA’s membership consists of around 80 card-carrying anglers, and a dedicated elected board of eight men. Many board members are professional fishing guides, although some, like Dan, make their living elsewhere. But they all know fish and are invested in fish. They are workingman’s environmentalists, volunteering their time to try to save what they love for the next generation to enjoy. They look to the future, remember the past, and act in the present.
I attended a board meeting at a local barbecue-and-beer joint. Everyone else at our table had sun-bleached hair, deep tans, and the hard-eyed look of somebody who knows exactly what lives in the water, and has caught and eaten it. I was surrounded by apex predators, saltwater hunters at home on the sea and the flats. Most of these men have been on the water longer than I have been alive, and between them have probably caught enough fish to fill an ocean.
Their names are often heard around our region’s docks: Capt. Charlie Schoonmaker, a patriarchal white-haired wizard of a fisherman, full of happiness and the patience only the sea can give. His son, Capt. Robert Schoonmaker, red of beard and doubtless handed a rod and reel by his father at a sunrise age. He is now an enormously accomplished guide in his own right, and the group’s unofficial leader. Our friend Dan George (of course). Capt. Jot Owens of Wrightsville Beach, black hair slicked back. Capt. Owen Sewell, the group’s information officer and “one of the integral heartbeats of the entire association,” according to Dan. Capt. Dave Timpy, whom Dan calls with a wry smile the brains of the group (Capt. Dave has a master’s degree in oceanography), and one of several Democrats at this table (let it be known that the RFA is a bipartisan group, both in membership and in lobbying. Some issues transcend mere party politics).
Capt. Dave holds records for cobia, and has caught more fish than you can shake a rod at, but honestly, he’s over it. Except for king mackerel, catching fish is just not exciting for him anymore. The reason he is doing this, he says, sipping his sweet tea, is not for himself, but for future generations. His grandkids need fish to catch. And the timing is critical, he tells me: We are on the brink of collapse of many inshore species. The fish that is in the most hot water, so to speak, is that two-eyes-on-the-same-side-of-its-head steamrolled beauty we love to eat but hate to fillet: the Southern flounder. The Division of Marine Fisheries website warns: “There are concerns about the sustainability of current harvest levels due to coast-wide trends in juvenile and adult abundance and the high percentage of immature fish in the harvest.” Dan tells me he has yet to catch a keeper flounder this year.
When a red drum encounters a lonely finger mullet — a circle hook secreted away in its little head, dangling by hardy monofilament from a neon-green bobber — the drum attacks like a prizefighting boxer taking a swing. The only warning you get (you, the first-time drum fisherman standing in thigh-deep water, pole in hand, nervously scanning for jellyfish and bonnethead sharks) is the vanishing of your bobber. As you wonder where it went, something tries to wrench your rod from your hands with a ferocious tugging jolt of pure aquatic power. The braided line on your reel sizzles seaward. The rod bends nearly in half. You hold on, brace your feet against the oyster shells, dig in, lean back. The line peels off your reel at a worrying pace as still the fish speeds like a Ferrari toward deep water, swimming farther and faster than you ever thought a fish could go.
Time slows down. Its movement is primal and instant-by-instant, how I imagine our ancestors’ whole lives unfolded – a real, in-the-moment intensity. After what seems like minutes, the fish slows, fatigued from its initial burst. Here is your chance. You crank your reel madly, the rod against your forearm like an arm wrestler, and you gain on him, fighting for every inch. He runs again — another bolt into the blue, the relative safety of the brine, away from whatever unseen force is pulling him where he does not want to go. All you can do is hang on, trust your equipment. You are aware now of your fishing rod’s fragility, the lever which you use — humans and their tools — to tame the wildness of the fish to a manageable level.
Solving the cradle-robbing problem, claims the RFA, begins with more enforcement of the catch and size limit laws already in place. Policing on the water is notoriously poor, they say. The hardworking NC Marine Patrol officers patrolling this corner of the state are spread too thin, and mostly patrol during the daytime — not at night, when some unscrupulous giggers are pulling into the ramp with an undersized catch. “We’re asking for more policing on ourselves,” says Capt. Robert Schoonmaker.
The main issue, however, is the use of “destructive gear”: gigging, inshore trawling and inshore gill nets. Gill nets are vertical panels of netting with floats on top and weights on the bottom. They hang like spectral curtains in the water, ensnaring whatever swims through it by the gills. North Carolina is the last state in the union to allow the practice. Proponents — mostly commercial fishermen — claim to rely heavily on gill nets for their living during certain seasons of the year. “Net bans in general are disruptive to the fishing community,” confirms Dr. David Griffith, senior scientist and associate professor of anthropology at East Carolina University.
The RFA points out the obvious problems with using gear that indiscriminately catches fish and sea turtles and whatever else happens to be swimming around inshore, in the marshes and in the shallow bays that serve as the ocean’s nursery. Many saltwater fish migrate inshore to lay eggs; once the babies hatch, they mature in relative safety, as there are hiding places amid the oyster reefs, plentiful food, and fewer predators. Both gill nets and inshore trawling can catch and kill juvenile fish before they get the chance to breed, disrupting the life cycle in a manner which the RFA claims the fisheries just can’t handle.
“Once a fish is caught in a gill net or shrimp trawl, that fish is dead,” says Dan. A fish caught by a hook and line has a 98 percent chance of survival after being released, according to a NOAA study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. But fish caught in nets are often injured by the equipment, or are left out of the water for too long. “People think the fish aren’t biting — they’re just not there.”
Your mind is with the fish, and you try to anticipate him — what will he do next? How will I respond? Slowly you reel and walk backward to shallower water, the high ground of the oyster shell pile where your kayak sits. Dan shouts encouragement. You are playing the eternal game of life and death, of predator and prey. As you bring the fish closer he tries to slug his big round head around toward deep water and escape, but you have him now, and all he can do is splash with his black-spotted tail, reveal his coppery scales and his cream-colored belly.
You marvel at his size. He is simply enormous, the biggest thing you have ever caught on a rod and a reel, by far. You knew, of course, that fish got that big, but to see him up close is heart-pausing, mind-focusing. At the orders of Dan, who has done this more times than you can imagine, you lead the fish into the shallows, his shadow growing larger against the white oyster shells. With a final throe, he heaves onto dry land. And you yell. You whoop. You sound your barbaric yawp across the wave-tops of the lower Cape Fear, a grin consuming your face, victorious joy bubbling up from a previously untapped well deep inside you. This, you realize, is why people fish.
“Damn,” says Dan, raising an eyebrow, “That’s a monster. Thirty-three inches.” Not bad for a beginner. Dan shows you how to hold the fish: slip your index finger under the slimy gill folds, cradle him near his tail. “Hold him up,” says Dan, “we’ll take a picture.” The fish is docile, now, placid. You feel his weight, his mass of animal muscle and scale and fin. He is the most beautiful thing you’ve seen this morning in the already-overwhelming beauty of the river: soft pastels of dawn sky, the water’s quiet tranquil clarity, sublime solitude, green cordgrass and white oysters and the river’s tannin-browned blue as the tide rolls in slow. Low horizon clouds with peach bottoms and cotton-ball fringe. Life moving around you, close and heavy.
Despite the RFA’s relatively recent incorporation, they have worked diligently to accomplish their goals. In their mission to ban destructive gear, RFA members have met with many other fishing groups, including the NC Fisherman’s Association, and lawmakers, including NC State Rep. Jimmy Dixon.
Capt. Dave points to Florida as a success story. Five years after Florida banned inshore gill nets, he says, the fish population exploded, prompting recreational fishermen to visit the state. If fishermen come to North Carolina to fish, he says, not only do they support the local tackle shops and fishing guides who get them out on the water, they also stay in hotels, eat in local restaurants and purchase gasoline. Recreational fishing is a $1.5 billion industry, one which flows through our coastal economy in channels that run deep.
After the picture, you release your fish; he is too big to keep. Drum are a slot fish, legal only between 18 and 27 inches from round head to tail’s tip. You hold his tail until his gills gulp water, and he regains his strength. With a sudden pulse he knocks your hand away — the duel is over — and glides off into deeper water. You are glad that he is free again. You know this fish, now. You have fought him and won and loved him for the fight. Then you wade back out and cast again.
You do this over and over for the rest of the day. It is the only thing you have to do. That day you catch eight drum, each a thrilling, primal prizefighter. By three o’clock your wrist aches, you have been stung by a jellyfish (and it hurts), and your legs have turned a worryingly-deep hue of sunburnt pink you’ve never before seen, but it has been a happy, happy day. For a rare moment in time, nothing else mattered: none of the usual creeping worries, no arguments, no nagging dread or remorse. Here, on this oyster-covered sandbar, you had one purpose. It was simple, and it filled all the space in your mind and erased the peripheral black edge of worry. Today is about catching fish.
You are (forgive the pun) hooked, a lost cause; you are going to sell all of your possessions and buy a kayak and a fishing pole and you will be out here every day from now on, hunting for that feeling of joy, that primal squirt of endorphins, the meditation of total occupation. Dan knows just how you feel, says it all – “This is what makes the rest of my life possible” – and you finally understand what he and the rest the RFA are trying to protect.
John Wolfe is a regular Salt contributor. When he’s not on the water, he wishes he was.
