Raising the Story

Reprinted from Tradewinds Magazine, 2022 by B. Garrity-Blake. Photo courtesy of Jake Griffin

“Hard to think that I’m one of the young ones in the industry,” commercial fisherman Jake Griffin laughed. “I’m thirty!”

Griffin is one the young ones given that the average age of North Carolina watermen is 52 according to a 2017 study of ocean-going fishermen.

Born and raised in his homeport of Wanchese, Griffin fishes all over the map, up and down the coast of North Carolina and even out of Alaska and Maine.

“I’m shark fishing now,” he said. “I’ve been fishing out of Morehead City. I trailer the boat here and there, chasing what needs to be chased - sharp noses, spinners, hammers.”

Griffin began commercial fishing when he was eleven. “My father signed his license over to me. I had a 13-foot skiff and started out with 50 crab pots and a stand of flounder net.” He got his own Standard Commercial Fishing License at sixteen.

“Traded my skiff for a 21-foot bow-picker, a net-reel boat, moved to Hatteras after high school and started branching out to Spanish mackerel and sharks.”

When market prices for flounder increased, he decided to give floundering another try. “I went and bought a stump-knocker skiff, rigged up flounder nets and started back into it for two years until they cut the quota with the Amendment plan.”

After exiting the flounder fishery and having no use for the small skiff and nets, he decided to give a kid some help getting started in the fishery.

“I wound up giving my flounder skiff, that little stump knocker, to a young boy in Sneads Ferry so he can get started out. Rigged him up with a motor, a handful of nets. He’s down there oystering with it now with his sister – it’s good to see and pass it along as things were handed down to me to get me started.”

Not only did Griffin jump back into the shark fishery, but he also tried his hand at a historical fishery few people did anymore – the beach seine fishery, where crews “ride the beach and look for gannets,” launching a dory through the surf to seine schools of fish.

The beach seine fishery is one of the oldest in the Outer Banks, stretching back to 1790 when bottlenose dolphins, processed for their oil, were captured and hauled to the beach with a horse and capstan. Beach seining for bluefish was documented as early as 1842. Nowadays mullet, striped bass, and butterfish are among the targeted species hauled ashore by truck.

“I enjoyed beach seining as a kid – it’s something I’ve always talked about doing. So I bought a dory rig a few years ago on a whim.” State managers require beach seine crews to use heavy, multifilament nets to be better detected and avoided by marine mammals.

“It’s such a big heavy net that my dory didn’t carry it very well. I said, okay, if I’m going to be beach fishing I’m going to go ahead and get one built.” So last winter, after a futile effort to find a willing boat builder, Jake Griffin and his friends built a dory themselves.

“A friend who owns an upholstery shop let us build it there. We scratched it out, rolled the tar paper on the floor, lofted it out. From paper to paint it was 40 days. We built it out of foam and glass instead of planks. All experimental. I’m really pleased with how it turned out.”

Griffin emphasized that just about everything he’s done in commercial fishing was with the help of industry mentors. Beach seining was no exception.

“Louie Davenport is my biggest idol and mentor in the beach fishery. Without him I’d be lost. He saw me struggling the first couple of sets. He said, Where you setting that rig next? See you tomorrow at 4:30.’ Yes sir! Cool! He came and things turned around that very morning.”

Jake Griffin said that beach fishing is an ideal way to introduce young people into the fisheries.

“I’m able to get younger kids to help out because they can work before or after school. Beach seining is an easy introduction to commercial fishing, a soft start - you see the work, learn the knots, the mending, some basic skills.”

He joked that he’s running the “Griffin Fisheries Six Weeks Boot Camp Program. “Last spring we had some 15, 16 year old boys helping us. We all had to pitch 20- and 30-pound cow nose rays back in the ocean every morning for an hour and a half. Those boys started out as twigs! By the end of it they could throw them rays just as far as I could!”

Beach seining as also a great way to educate the public about commercial fishing, because it’s visible and accessible along the shoreline.

“I’ve met people from all over the world, just walking down the beach, who say, ‘Hey, what are you all doing here? What is this?’ Next thing you know, they’re watching you haul back, asking a bunch of questions, and it’s an opportunity to educate people. I tell ‘em, grab what you want! We send them over the dune with a bag of bluefish, and to them, it’s everything in the world.”

Jake Griffin witnessed firsthand how even a hostile reception can be turned into an educational experience.

“We were beach fishing with our trucks and dory and seine off Nags Head. A lady approached us all upset because we had set right behind her house. ‘I paid five thousand dollars to stay in this house, why do you have to do that in our backyard?’”

The conversation got a little heated. “I finally said, ma’am, honestly there’s nothing we can do right now. The net’s set. We’re going to wait a couple hours until the top of the tide, and when the tide starts falling, we can haul the net.”

The woman returned later. “She stood on the dune with two kids at her hips. We pulled the net up on the beach and the kids came barreling down to check it out. ‘What’s that? What’s this?’ Put them in the basket! They were grabbing fish, throwing horseshoe crabs back.”

At day’s end, the woman asked if they’d be back because her kids had so enjoyed themselves.

“I saw right there how to educate people about commercial fishing. You can make a Facebook page, you can get behind a campaign, put literature out there. But nothing compares to a hands-on education – that is hands-down the best thing.”

Although Griffin has invested in the historical fishery of beach seining, he is also very much focused on the future of the industry.

“I feel good about the future,” he said. “There’s a lot of transitions in the fishery from a quantity market to a quality market, and the way things are trending people want to know the story of the product – we really need to push the emphasis on quality.”

Seafood wholesalers, in Griffin’s view, have a key role in supporting innovative ways to deliver the highest quality product possible.

“Alaska fish houses do an awesome job with their incentive programs on their fisheries.” Griffin explained that buyers pay the fishermen extra if the fish are bled, iced in brine, or kept in refrigerated saltwater or RSW. “They give you all these incentives per pound to produce a better-quality product.”

The industry will also benefit from having more people and organizations advocate for local seafood and North Carolina’s fishing heritage, such as Outer Banks Catch and NC Catch.

“You don’t have to be a fisherman to be a good voice for fishermen,” Griffin reflected. He expressed respect for vessel captains like Dewey Hemilright and Jimmy Ruhle who serve on management councils, boards, and research teams. “That takes a lot, to sacrifice your fishing time to ensure a future for the industry.”

Jake Griffin practices what he preaches. He serves on the spiny dogfish advisory panel for the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council and is a former member of the state’s Southern Regional Advisory Committee. His message to young people entering commercial fishing is simple -- stay positive and be proactive.

“Don’t get too deterred by naysayers; don’t let that eat you up too much,” Griffin said. “Don’t get discouraged by regulations – jump in and get involved! Get the inside scoop and share the knowledge with others. The more people that get involved the better it’s going to be.”