Ocracoke’s Commercial Fishing Heritage

Ocracoke’s Commercial Fishing Heritage. . Ocracoke has been a fishing community since prehistoric times, when Croatan Indians fished these waters with hand-woven nets, or weirs, and speared fish out of wooden canoes. They gathered clams ad oysters in the tidal flats, trapped diamondback terrapins in the creeks, and occasionally harvested one of the huge loggerhead sea turtles that lumbered up on the beaches in summer to lay eggs., The first Europeans to inhabit the island were ships’ pilots, send over by the English crown to aid in navigation. They and their families must have lived off the bounty of the sea. As a community gradually developed, fishing inevitably grew until it became one of the main livelihoods on the island. Fishing methods did not change much over the years. New rules dictated adaptions in such things as the size of nets and the number of fish caught, but Ocracoke fisherman today use may of the same methods for procuring seafood as did their fathers and grandfathers., Ocracoke fishermen have traditionally made their livings by fishing with pound nets (fish traps made by attaching net to long stakes pounded into the bottom of Pamlico Sound), gill nets (nets suspended from floats and attached to stakes, designed to ensnare the gills of fish in the mesh), long hauling (which one fishermen in two boats work together to surround a school of fish with net), and sink nets (nets dropped deep into the ocean to catch bottom fish). Crabbing, once done with trot lines, ore recently uses crab pots which lure crabs into wire cages from which they cannot escape. Clamming is accomplished by taking skiffs (once powered by sail, now by gasoline engines) out to clam beds, where the shellfish are pulled out of the sand with specially designed rakes. Fishermen use boats and tongs to procure oysters during the months of winter, and they catch shrimp by dragging nets attached to outriggers behind shrimp boats., (caption) To learn more about Ocracoke’s commercial fishing heritage visit the Ocracoke Watermen’s exhibit on the dock at the Community Store Square. Photograph by Martha MacMillan Roberts, Standard Oil (New Jersey) Collection, Photographic Archives, University of Louisville.