They Made their Net from String: Heidi Roberts of Atlantic, NC Carries on the Craft
Reprinted from Tradewinds Magazine, 2020 by B. Garrity-Blake. Interview by Susan Mason for NOAA-funded Local Fisheries Knowledge Project. Photo by Susan Mason
“You use a pattern, just like it was a dress you were cutting out,” Heidi Harris Roberts said in a 2007 interview. “Piece by piece, you sew it together – that’s the way you make nets.”
Roberts should know. She is carrying on a family legacy that started when her father, Roger Harris, established Harris Net Shop in 1970. He learned that he had a knack for nets while working on menhaden vessels out of Cameron, Louisiana and ended up in the company seine loft. When he returned to Atlantic, North Carolina, he decided to build nets instead of plying the seas for fish.
“Clayton Fulcher wanted him to be his net man, but Daddy decided to start his own business,” Roberts explained. “The Fulchers backed him – they signed for him to get credit at the bank.”
Although Roger Harris started his own business, he built the shop next to his home and net making grew into a family business.
“Daddy used to get us kids to help him,” Roberts said. “My brother Bubba worked every day after school, but I tried to sneak away ‘cause I was right smart lazy.” Throughout the years, all three Harris children put in countless hours building fishing nets, as did Mrs. Rita Harris, their mother.
“We all worked in the net shop,” Roberts recalled. “Momma would come out to help us. One time we made forty-four shrimp trawls in one week!”
Roger Harris was left-handed, which made it hard for his daughter to follow him. “My brother probably showed me more because he was right-handed like me,” Roberts mused. “But Bubba had very little patience, so you really had to pay attention.”
Before Heidi Roberts’ time, people sewed cotton nets from scratch, not from machine-made nylon or polyethylene mesh.
“A long time ago they didn’t buy netting in the bales,” Roberts explained. “Matter of fact, the first net that Daddy ever made for himself was with a string and a gauge. That’s what people used to have to do -- they made their net from the string.”
The net building process requires great skill in designing and cutting particular kinds of nets that catch particular kinds of fish and other marine species.
“We’ve made clam nets, crab nets, horseshoe crab nets, and conch nets,” Roberts said. Her family has made countless flounder, spot, mullet, and shrimp nets. In the winter months they used to make flynets, a specialized mid-depth trawl that catches multiple species of fish. But North Carolina managers banned the gear south of Cape Hatteras in 1994. “When they changed the law and you had to go north of Hatteras to fish, men started getting their flynets from Wanchese and that kind of nipped our winter’s work in the bud.”
Harris family members have worked with scientists and managers to equip nets with required conservation devices in a way that both protects endangered species and catches fish. “You’ve got to realize not everybody’s out to put you out of business,” Roberts said. “What I’ve found is that they’re actually pretty nice people who want to keep the fishing industry open.”
The Harris family has helped fit and test sea turtle excluder devices (TEDs) and finfish bycatch reduction devices (BRDs) on trawls, as well as excluder panels on long haul seines and pound nets.
“In the beginning fishermen thought the TEDs was the worst thing that ever happened,” Roberts reflected. “But the devices let small fish out that they couldn’t sell anyway -- sometimes you have to do what you don’t like in order to stay in business.”
The fishing industry has changed since Roger Harris passed away in 2005. The number of fishermen, fish houses, and amount of seafood brought to the dock have all declined. In 2010 Heidi Roberts took a full-time day job with the North Carolina Ferry System ten, while continuing to build nets at night.
“We’ve been slammed here lately,” Roberts said. “I’m working the ferry and going straight to the net shop, six nights a week.” Orders for trawl nets have increased thanks to a record-breaking abundance of ocean shrimp in recent years. Roberts has also had a good run on decoy nets, which are used to set rafts of floating decoys by waterfowl hunters.
“Decoy nets. Nets used in baseball batting cages. That’s what you’ve got to do – use your skills in different ways.” As her brothers are busy with fishing, Roberts has enlisted a local girl to help her and can always depend on her mother.
“I love working at home, right beside my mother’s house. I like being able to wear shorts and a tee shirt, and I like the fishermen that I see from time to time,” Roberts said. “You develop relationships that you’ve had for years and years.”
Despite the ups and downs inherent in the fishing industry, Heidi Roberts is proud of her father’s legacy in establishing Harris Net Shop, still going strong after fifty years. She encourages others to learn the craft.
“I would like to see this work passed on to the next generation and the next,” she reflected. “I’d like for people to know that this is a heritage and skilled labor - anyone can learn if they want to learn.”
