Saving More Than a Fish House

Various links

By Heidi Jernigan Smith, Photos by Susse Wright, 7/2007

Hope on the Horizon

Today, there are signs of new life on Ocracoke Island. The U.S. Coast Guard station, which sat abandoned for nearly a decade, is now home to the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT) hosting 40 weeklong seminars annually for teachers who come to renew their love of learning. The island is their classroom, and a waiting list exists for NCCAT’s “Salty Dogs and the Lore of the Sea” session where teachers spend two days on the water with OWWA members checking pound nets and crab pots then dining on their day’s haul.

Blackbeard’s legendary hangout Springer’s Point has been acquired by the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, preserving 120 acres of maritime forest. Sidewalks were poured in the village this spring to accommodate ever growing foot traffic along Hwy. 12. The state ferry division has added an extra run between the island and mainland Swan Quarter during peak tourist season. The volunteer fire department is pursuing a long overdue expansion with the foundation’s assistance. With its designation as a “21st Century Community” the entire county has a myriad of resources poised to turn back the rising tide of poverty and declining population. And the fish house is alive with activity: Hyde County crab cakes and Ocracoke favorites like southern flounder, red drum and oysters enjoy brisk sales. There’s even a movement underway to preserve the native brogue.

No, you can’t buy a lottery ticket on Ocracoke Island. But for those who live and vacation here, every day is a treasure.

“Fragile little worlds rooted in salt marsh and mud still thrive, against terrific odds, … in heartbreaking testimony to American perseverance. The story is heartbreaking, as every fisherman in the U.S. knows, because it is being revised and rewritten by those powerful enough to change whole landscapes and influence the views of large numbers of people. But fishermen, mediators between the ever boxed-in and regulated life of society and the flux and fluidity of life on the water, manage to keep bringing us the only wild caught food product on the U.S. market. Fishing families live by the values considered truly American—independence, risk-taking and freedom—and get punished for having the audacity to do so. May this scrappy group of survivors sail into the future and garner a little more respect and fairness in the world.”

—From “Fish House Opera”

Heidi Jernigan Smith is director of public relations for Tideland EMC.

“Fish House Opera,” by Barbara Garrity-Blake and Susan West, published in 2003 by Mystic Seaport Press, describes the life and lore of North Carolina commercial fishing. It is 150 pages and available at Mystic Seaport Museum, N.C. Maritime Museum, Dee Gees Books in Morehead City, Manteo Booksellers in Manteo and online at www.manteobooksellers.com.