Turtle Stew

Reprinted and edited from Fish House Opera by S. West and B. Garrity-Blake, Mystic Seaport Press, 2003

“While browsing in a local store,” wrote Harkers Islander Linda Gillikin to the editor of the Carteret News-Times, “I overheard two women discussing how nicely beach nourishment was proceeding.”

Beach nourishment is the expensive and controversial method of pumping sand from the ocean bottom onto the shoreline to build up an eroding beach and protect expensive oceanfront homes. Two loggerhead and two Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles had just been sucked up in the pump and killed, temporarily halting nourishment efforts along Pine Knoll Shores in Carteret County.

“One woman stated, ‘You know, if they catch one more turtle, they will have to stop dredging.’ The other lady exclaimed, ‘Oh, just kill it. What difference could one turtle make?’

“I was compelled to answer, ‘Now you can understand how the fishermen feel.’ The woman brushed by me as if I had not spoken, as if I was not standing there. I could not help but feel how the local fishermen do - unseen, unheard, and voiceless. I was struck by the gross inequality that the woman’s statement reflected.”

Gillikin’s one-sided encounter with the woman in the store was yet another small incidence of cultural values colliding along the coast. The unique chords and harmonics of coastal life, shaping how villagers relate to the natural world, go unnoticed by new condominium owners intent on finding the perfect blue carpet to set off the slice of sea visible from their sunrooms.

Down East fishing families are only a generation or two removed from the days when sea turtles were marketed as a commodity. In an 1880 report published in G.B. Goode’s Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, Frederick True described an unusual method of turtle capture in Bogue Sound, the waters adjacent to today’s Pine Knoll Shores where the beach nourishment controversy unfolded. Invented by Captain Joshua Lewis, “turtle diving” replaced spearing and yielded a live animal for market.

The fisherman “ties the painter of his boat to his leg and dives upon the turtle,” wrote True. “Seizing the anterior edge of the carapace with one hand, and the posterior edge with the other, he turns the head of the turtle upward, so the animal immediately rises to the surface, bringing the fisherman with it.”

Steering the turtle toward a “shoaler spot” with his boat dragging behind him, the fisherman would gain footing in shallow water, seize the turtle, and heave it into the boat.

In 1987 the Harkers Island United Methodist Women put together a cookbook called Island Born and Bred that included a recipe for “Turkle.” It called for one medium-sized loggerhead sea turtle, quartered. Meat should be parboiled, the recipe directed, and stewed with pork dripping, potatoes, onions, and flour dodgers. “Need old-timer to cut turtle out of shell,” the recipe reads, “not everyone can do it!”. A disclaimer at the top of the page noted that the inclusion of the recipe was not meant to encourage illegal activity. Cordoned off in the “traditional” section of the cookbook alongside recipes for loons and robins, the turtle dish stirs up memories in locals of long-ago Sunday dinners.

Core Sounders who trawled for shrimp under the night skies were thinking hard about sea turtles at the time the Methodist Women’s cookbook came out. Fishermen’s attitudes began to change in the late 1980s when U.S. shrimpers were blamed for the impending extinction of the ancient reptiles. In a cornerstone report dedicated to the “peacful coexistence of sea turtles and shrimp fisheries,” the National Academy of Sciences proclaimed that shrimping was responsible for 86% of all human-caused turtle mortalities. Downplaying the role of beachfront development, off-road vehicle traffic, pollution, and oil drilling, the report concluded, “the incidental capture of sea turtles in shrimp trawls kills more turtles than all other human activities combined.”

“What few turtles I’ve caught in my thirty years of fishing have been so lively they liked to tear my nets scrambling to get back in the water,” said a Core Sounder, fingering a Sea Grant brochure that offered fishermen instructions on how to revive a sluggish turtle. “But hell, I’ll give ‘em mouth-to-mouth if it’ll keep us from pulling turtle shooters!”

“Turtle shooters,” known officially as Turtle Excluder Devices or TEDs, are round metal grids that Gulf Coast shrimpers had been required to use since 1979. TEDs are fitted into trawl nets. The bars of the grid are spaced wide enough to permit shrimp to pass through to the net’s tailbag, but close enough to stop turtles and deflect them out through a flap in the net. Gulf fishermen, in high profile protests like the blocking of Galveston Bay, complained that too many shrimp escaped with the turtles, and that debris-clogged TEDs fouled up their harvests.

“With turtle shooters you ain’t shrimping no more,” agreed Tarheel fisherman Larry Kellum, who helped test TEDs in Atlantic Ocean waters. “You’re just burning fuel and excluding turtles.”

“Like it or not, TEDs are coming,” a NC Division of Marine Fisheries staffer said to the dozens of fishermen who met at the Marshallberg Volunteer Fire Department building. “National Marine Fisheries Service is going to require TEDs here.”

The Center for Marine Conservation, an environmental organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., had levied a lawsuit against National Marine Fisheries Service, charging that the agency was not upholding the Endangered Species Act by allowing some shrimpers to forgo the use of TEDs. Such lawsuits against the federal government became common in the 1990s, prompting an environmental group’s executive director to admit, “I do think litigation is overused. It’s hard to identify what the strategic goal is, unless it is to signficiantly reshape society.” The “reshaping of society” was precisely what Down East fishermen feared.

The Division of Marine Fisheries staffer shifted in his chair and adjusted his baseball cap, aware of the impact of his news. “From January on,” he emphasized, “you have to be outfitted with TEDs or your boat will be seized, your catch impounded, and you’ll be charged with a felony.”

“The Bible says man shall hold dominion over all the creeping crawling thngs of this earth,” said a thin, gray-haired fisherman as he stood and pointed to the bureaucrat. “The government is placing the value of a turtle above the value of a man’s family. That, my friend, ain’t right!”

“Sit down, Daddy,” said his son, easing him back in the chair. “You know the government never did put no stock in the Holy Bible.”

But the old-timer voiced a concern felt by many in the Down East area - a reranking was afoot that not only put turtles above humans, but put working-class fishermen below everybody else. They asked why, in spite of the Endangered Species Act, beach homes and condominiums were erected on sandy barrier islands. Or why sport fishermen could drive trucks along National Park beaches that served as turtle-nesting grounds.

Fishermen resented shouldering the burden of a new taboo unshared by the wider coastal community.

“The turtle watchers that want us gone live in those very condos and beach homes that destroyed the sand dunes and nesting grounds,” said a fisherman from Salter Path. “But nobody wants to talk about that.”

Linda Gillikin, reflecting on the shoppers’ cavalier attitude toward the beach nourishment turtle deaths, agreed.

“A turtle can be sacrificed to protect the valuable real estate of some, but not the precious livelihood of others,” she wrote. “Surely the life of a turtle caught in the dredging of sand to protect one man’s property has the same worth as a turtle caught in the net of a fisherman working to protect the life of his family.”

“I am concerned about the financial and spiritual well-being of those fishing families I serve in Atlantic,” wrote the Reverend Benjamin S. Sharpe of the Atlantic United Methodist Church. He referred to a regulation in addition to Turtle Excluder Device requirements that infringed upon the religious sensibility of some fishermen - a proposal to close Friday nights to trawling, which would shave off the last workday of the week before shrimping resumed Sunday evening at sundown. Many fishermen who had opted out of working Sunday night to be with family or go to church now felt compelled to start their week on the “Lord’s Day” to make up for the loss of Friday night.

“Fishermen feel split between their Christian commitment and the need to provide for their families,” Reverend Sharpe continued. “The interests of commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, and conservationists seem to be nearly mutually exclusive at times. Commercial fishing has been a part of Down East life since before 1684. Recent legislation and policy have hastened the erosion of the unique, traditional culture.”

Twila Nelson, married to a Harkers Island fisherman, led the effort to retain Friday night shrimping. She belonged to the island’s Grace Holiness Church and followed church doctrine by not cutting her hair, donning a skirt at all times, and going without makeup or jewelry. Her appearance belied a razor-sharp political sophistication - she later became a governor appointee to both the state Marine Fisheries Commission and the Joint Legislative Commission on Seafood and Aquaculture. Nelson called a press conference on Harkers Island, and the fishermen’s concerns hit the evening news. Nelson’s leadership further awakened the political consciousness of fisher-women.

Women accustomed to mending nets, keeping accounts, filling out required state and federal fishery forms, driving fish trucks, and juggling a slew of other tasks simply added “taking on the government” to the list of chores necessary to keep the family business up and running. Twenty-two year old Tina Beacham explained, “Our husbands can’t go to all these meetings. They’re working all the time, trying to make a living. It’s up to us to go to these meetings and fight.”

Women up and down the coast formed “ladies auxiliaries” to the North Carolina Fisheries Association, a trade group historically controlled by the “fish barons,” a powerful group of seafood wholesalers.

“There is just this terrible sense of unease,” explained Dorothy Dunn, co-organizer of the Hatteras-Ocracoke Auxiliary. Dunn reflected on the best thing that was rising out of the turtle conflict - fishing towns were coming together and women were laying the foundation for a statewide political network. “We all have an awareness that the world as we know it is about to change. We also know that we had better be prepared to understand and shape that change.”

“Remember that we are on the Endangered Species list along with the turtle,” wrote Tina Beacham in an appeal for Carteret County women to organize. “Commercial fishermen need to pull together as one.” Never before had wives, let alone fishermen, been so visible in the public eye. It was a role few felt comfortable with, but everyone - even men who found themselves cooking supper and putting kids to bed while their wives attended meetings - understood its importance.

God Grant that I may fish until my dying day,

and when I come to my last cast, I’ll then most humbly pray,

When in the Lord’s safe landing net I’m peacefully asleep,

that in His mercy I’ll be judged as good enough to keep.

The “fisherman’s prayer” opened each Carteret Auxiliary meeting. “The Feds are going to shove TEDs right down our throats,” Auxiliary president Anita Darden declared to a room full of men and women. “I think it’s time we got radical.” One month later, she found herself heading a protest march to the National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory on Pivers Island in Beaufort. Although the laboratory housed scientists and not policymakers, the women understood that even the smallest protest would garner publicity, and could possibly subvert the workings of bureaucratic procedure.

“I hope my voice doesn’t shake,” said Darden. “I know I’ll be nervous.” On a cold March morning in 1993, a modest group of men and women gathered at a road leading to the NMFS building. Two fishermen, P.D. Mason of Bettie and Marshall “Skeeter” Saunders of Atlantic, stood stoically while women tied sections of fishing net to their bodies. The nets held round TED grids, and from a distance the men resembled turtles carrying their shells. The Auxiliary women passed out posters to the group with slogans such as “Commercial Fishermen: the Endangered Species” and “Tow Times, Not Teds.”

The knot of protesters, bearing blue “Save the Commercial Fishermen” flags and accompanied by a couple of reporters and a cameraman, walked down the road and stopped in front of the NMFS building. “I saw them coming that morning and thought, oh no,” a NMFS biologist recalled. “I slipped in a side door. All I could think was, poor Bud!” Ford “Bud” Cross, director of the Pivers Island laboratory, met the protestors in the front parking lot.

“My name is Anita Darden,” blared the voice through the megaphone. “I am president of the NCFA Auxiliary Carteret County Chapter. My husband is a commercial fisherman. I think you know why we’re here.” A 14-year old girl held a clipboard for Darden so she could read the statement. “We will not be unjustly labeled as turtle-killers. We are appalled at your senseless policies in an area with a depressed economy and no decent job alternatives.” The March wind whipped her hair around. “How dare you burden us with this politically driven agenda without even pretending to study the consequences?” Director Cross listened intently. He no doubt understood that the protest was staged to attract attention to their cause.

“We are not ignorant fishwives and rednecks. We are hard-working human beings with children to raise, mortgages to meet, and dreams to live for. We have coexisted with turtles for generations.” Darden took a wavering breath and finished up. “We demand the right to go on with our work and quietly live our lives.”

On the 6:00 news, Darden was shown delivering a stack of petitions containing some 2,000 signatures opposing the TED rule. The reporter conveyed that a small revolution was at hand. Before the evening was through, Andy Kemmerer from NMFS’s southeast regional office in St. Petersburg, Florida called Anita Darden.

“What do you want me to do?” he inquired. Within days, Kemmerer flew to Carteret County to meet with Darden, other Auxiliary members, and commercial fishing families numbering so many they filled the high school auditorium. The Auxiliary and fishermen presented maps and data supporting their objections, but Kemmerer made clear the NMFS bottom line: under the Endangered Species Act, the governent had the power to elminate trawling altogether in turtle-inhabited waters. In that light, he reasoned, were TEDs not a preferable alternative?

“We thought all we had to do was expose the facts,” said Tina Beacham, sitting in No Name Pizza in Beaufort with several fishermen’s wives. They were licking their wounds after hearing the TEDs would go into effect despite their efforts. “We thought that once the truth was known, the knots would untangle and fairness would prevail.”

“Apparently facts are beside the point,” said Anita Darden, taking a drag off her cigarette. “Just like those trick birthday candles - the fires are going to keep popping up. We run around trying to put out the flames, but there’s no end to them.”

“The more I thought about the conversation in the store about beach nourishment and sea turtle deaths, the more I realized the issue isn’t about turtles - it’s about an underlying lack of understanding and respect for people who have lived and died in the waters of Carteret County for generations,” concluded Linda Gillikin in her letter to the editor.

“Whether or not we still net our living from its dark depths as our grandparents did, each of us can look into the rolling waves and see the faces of loved ones who lived and died in the sting of its salty breath,” she wrote. “No one would choose the hard life of commercial fishing for their children, but even today the water chooses them. The fishermen will be blamed for the extinction of the turtle. The reality is that both the turtle and the fishermen have been sold to the highest bidder.”