We Were the Heroes: Captain Jimmy Ruhl of Wanchese, NC

Reprinted and edited from Tradewinds Magazine, 2020, B. Garrity-Blake. Photo by B. Garrity-Blake.

“I’m here to help young blood get involved in the fishery,” said veteran commercial fisherman Jimmy Ruhle of Wanchese, North Carolina. He was addressing participants of Fish Camp, a skill-building and leadership training workshop for young commercial fishermen that took place in Carteret County this January. 

“We need the younger generation to step up,” he stressed. “The older generation is running out of gas.” 

Ruhle, like Captain Joe Rose who accompanied him, is one of the last of the independent owner-operators of ocean-going draggers. He’s fished from the Flemish Cap, a three-day steam east of the Grand Banks, to the Yucatan Peninsula. He’s done everything from long-lining and trawling to setting crab pots in the sound. 

“Captain Joe and I are both third generation fishermen,” Ruhl point out. “We both learned from our dads. We both lost brothers to that ocean, suffered that same loss. We’ve done it all.”  

Captain Ruhl’s core message to the fresh-faced men and women at Fish Camp was to respect themselves, and to recognize and value the fact that they contribute to society.  

“Hold your head up high. Be proud of this industry.” He referenced a time in history when fishermen were revered members of the community. 

“I have pictures of Gloucester captains standing on the bridge in a coat and tie, getting ready to go fishing. When they returned from a trip, they came off the boat in a coat and tie – they were considered prominent citizens in the area.” 

The respect, Ruhl added, was well-deserved because of what they were capable of doing. 

“They had to read the sexton. They had to know the stars. They had to know how to time a steam on a watch and a compass. They didn’t have fathometers, they had lead-lines. At the bottom of the lead-line was a cup, and under the cup was a piece of grease so that when they dropped that lead-line and saw what stuck they could tell by the feel of it, the smell of it, what kind of bottom they were in. That was the mindset of these guys.”  

Today’s fishermen face challenges unthinkable to older generations. In addition to ecological shifts, global market instabilities, and ever-tightening restrictions, the industry finds itself on the receiving end of negative bias and stereotyping. Ruhl offered a theory as to how this happened.  

“In the 1970s oil companies wanted to drill on Georges Bank. The fishing industry stopped them dead in their tracks. Within five years, environmental organizations popped up, funded by Pew, which is oil company money – the oil industry found a way to get back at us.”

Captain Ruhl maintained that well-funded NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are winning the messaging battle, portraying the industry as the bad guys. He held up a high school AP science textbook and read a passage which stated that trawlers destroy bottom habitat with nets “large enough to swallow twelve jumbo jets.” 

 “Jumbo jets? That’s a big damn plane! Twelve of them? I couldn’t dream of a net big enough to do that!” he said, shaking his head. 

The passage was quoting the World Wildlife Fund. “And here’s the false statement that hit me the hardest,” Ruhl said, continuing to read: “Most fish population estimates are based on fishers reporting their catch, and they may be lying or under-reporting for better financial gain.” He closed the book. “This is devastating. This is the kind of baloney that’s taught to young students, some who grow up and get jobs at NOAA.”

Captain Jimmy Ruhl wasn’t there to complain. He was there to advise young fishermen how to navigate such turbulent waters. 

“What we’ve got to do – what you’ve got to do – is prove that you can fish responsibly. Prove that you want to leave enough fish for next year. Do what you know is right, and document it in a matter where you can challenge this stuff.”

Jimmy Ruhl did just that, in response to NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s botched trawl surveys. A government research vessel had been towing incorrectly rigged trawl gear for two and a half years, resulting in skewed data that translated into tougher restrictions for fishermen. Dubbed “trawlgate,” NOAA admitted the error and built a larger, more technologically sophisticated research vessel called the Henry B. Bigelow. 

“I called it the Way-Too-Bigelow,” Ruhl quipped. “I was on the Mid-Atlantic Council and was elected chair of trawl advisory panel. They asked us to design a new net for this boat – something we in the industry could have confidence in. I went to the three major net vendors, gave them perimeters of what we wanted. Three competing entities – yet they were willing to sit at the table and come up with a net that could do a better job for the survey.”

Meanwhile, a researcher from the Virginia Institute for Marine Science (VIMS) asked Ruhl if he knew of a fishing boat that could accommodate six or seven scientists over a month’s time for a new inshore trawl survey. Ruhl couldn’t think of anyone prepared to make that commitment.

“That night I was eating dinner with my sons, and said, you know what? This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for my entire life. This is a new avenue for us to pursue. Let’s jump in, offer our services for the pilot study, and see if we can make this work.”

Ruhl’s motivation was wanting to help improve the data. He once told a reporter that he got sick of hearing federal managers talk about “Best Available Data: B-A-D!” He said cooperative research came naturally to him because he’d fished with his father, who pioneered the swordfish longline fishery out of North Carolina, and had taken part in tagging and research projects. 

“My dad told me that if you wanted to be successful fishing, you needed to understand what you catch - what it did, what it ate, and its habits,” Ruhl said. “It was automatic for me to get involved with the science part as well as the fishing part.” 

Captain Ruhl, his sons Bobby and Stevie, and mate Rigoberto offered their services, welcoming the scientists aboard the FV Darana R, rigged with a net identical in size to that of the Bigelow. 

“I’m on a 90-foot boat, 166 gross tons. The Way-Too-Bigelow is 205-foot, 2900 gross tons with infinite horsepower up to about 4,000. Our vessel is 24’ wide and Bigelow is 50’wide. No way the net can do what it was designed to do simply because the Bigelow is too big for the net – we tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

For Captain Ruhl, the stakes were high. “We had to prove to the world that a fishing boat can do as good as a science center’s boat.”

The VIMS trawl sampling project was called NEAMAP (“Nee-map”), or the NorthEast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program. 

“Every one of the VIMS scientists are top notch,” Jimmy Ruhl told the young fishermen. “They recognized they can utilize our expertise to make their product do better. And we gain in knowledge from everything we do with them.”

The first year of NEAMAP Captain Ruhl, his crew, and researchers made 100 tows from Montauk Point to Cape Hatteras. The next year NOAA funded them to tow what the Bigelow could not:  areas marked “non-towable” on the charts in Rhode Island and Block Island Sounds. 

“What you see is boulders and rock ledges, yet fishing takes place there,” Ruhl explained. The Bigelow’s attempts resulted in torn up gear.   

Jimmy Ruhl went straight to the fishermen familiar with the area and asked for their advice. They were glad to help guide his efforts for the sake of better data. 

“We were successful in doing what the Bigelow couldn’t do because those scientists didn’t believe in talking to fishermen. They said it’ll ‘bias’ the survey. They never should have towed there to start with – go where you can get a clear tow! But they looked at things differently.” 

Not only did the VIMS scientists learn from the fishermen on the FV Darana R, the cooperative effort resulted in the fishing crew learning about the world of science. 

“The fishermen are fascinated by the amount of work that the biologists do. They count, measure, and weigh all the fish. They’ve got electronic boards now - they hit it with a magnet and boom it’s recorded on the computer. The fish hold is converted to a wet lab. There they dissect fish – take ear bones and stomachs out of them, and do a full workup on that later.”

Ruhl said that although they’re providing the platform for the surveys (“we’re the bus driver”), they also provide input such as knowing where within the grid the fish will likely be. 

“We do interject some of our own knowledge whenever it’s necessary,” he said. Their cooperative research has resulted in not only a clean, solid data set; it’s also benefited industry in the form of better quotas and more effective management measures for species such as butterfish, squid, and black sea bass. 

Jimmy Ruhl stressed that after working with scientists on the NEAMAP program for 13 years, his crew and the researchers have built something even rarer than a clean data set: trust. 

“It’s rewarding to me to watch the industry I’m involved in interact with science in a positive way. You don’t see it enough. That’s what it takes to turn things around. We had to prove ourselves to them, and they had to prove themselves to us.” 

Three years ago, Captain Ruhl hit some hard luck. A fish house dock caught fire, and a portion of it fell on the FV Darana R, burning up the wheelhouse and electronics. 

“We were six months getting it all back together, 500 thousand dollars in damage with 325 thousand dollars insurance. But we decided to spend an additional 25 grand for a scientific sounder capable of recording acoustics as we’re steaming or towing across the grounds. Measures the size of the fish, estimates biomass, and records it all.” 

The FV Darana R is now the first fishing vessel on the Atlantic Coast equipped to do an acoustic survey. 

“They’re starting to collect the data from it,” said Ruhl. “Another step in the right direction.” 

Captain Ruhl stressed to the young people at Fish Camp that their knowledge is important to science. 

“The definition of science is ‘knowledge gained through experience.’ Remember that. Because every day you go fishing, you’re doing science – it’s just a different form.”  

Captain Ruhl encouraged Fish Camp participants to get engaged in the management process, be proud of the work they do, and keep fighting for what’s right. 

“We serve a purpose. We’re food providers. Consumers have no access to fish that swim in that ocean other than through you and me.” 

Ruhl left the young fishermen with plenty of food for thought.

“There’s a heritage behind fishing that deserves to be preserved. Think about the old movies like Captains Courageous and The Old Man and the Sea. We were the heroes.” 

Captain Jimmy Ruhl chats with Fish Camp fishermen Chelsea Futrell