Update on Coastal Fisheries Trial: Week 3 Recap

February 2 – 6, 2026

Trial continued this week in CCA NC’s lawsuit to hold the State accountable for failing to protect and preserve North Carolina’s once-abundant coastal fisheries. This past week, CCA NC and the other 89 citizen plaintiffs presented powerful testimony from a number of key witnesses:

• Dr. Louis Daniel, a lifelong fisherman and North Carolina native who served as North Carolina’s Fisheries Director from 2007 to 2016, continued his comprehensive testimony from last week. He described in detail his expert opinion that zero of the fourteen stocks managed by the State under a North Carolina stand-alone plan can be considered as having long-term viability (the statutory management standard for coastal fish stocks under the Fisheries Reform Act). He also reiterated his expert opinions that the State’s allowance of extensive use of both estuarine shrimp trawls and gillnets has had a continuing, devastating effect on coastal fish stocks and habitats.
• Dr. Sean Powers, Director of the Stokes School of Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of South Alabama, a Senior Marine Scientist at the Dauphin Island Marine Lab, and one of the nation’s preeminent coastal fisheries scientists, testified that his uncontroverted, quantitative trends analysis of seven coastal fish stocks historically important to North Carolinians for sustenance confirmed that all analyzed stocks were declining, that most show substantial age truncation, and that all lack long-term viability. He also provided his expert opinion that the State’s management is out of touch with modern fisheries science in that it completely lacks the precaution required for trustee management of public resources, particularly given the large amounts of uncertainty about resource harvest extractions (including both bycatch and targeted catch), greatly increasing the risk of harm to coastal fish stocks. Finally, Dr. Powers discussed the North Carolina Collaboratory’s January 2026 report to the General Assembly on the status of marine fisheries, which confirmed the dire status of the State’s coastal fisheries resources—most notably, that two thirds of coastal fish stocks examined by the Collaboratory’s scientists are overfished or suffering from overfishing.
• Dr. Gregory Stunz, the Director of the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University (Corpus Christi), and one of the nation’s leading experts in fisheries science and management, testified about sound principles of responsible, competent fisheries management based on well-accepted literature in the field, as well as his experience managing some of the most complex, high-stakes fisheries in the world. He compared those well-accepted principles of fisheries management to the State’s “abysmal” track record and management approach, giving his expert opinion that North Carolina’s fisheries management failures are “as bad as I’ve ever seen for any U.S.-based fisheries.” He testified further that if the State continues to allow significant, widespread use of estuarine gillnets, it is extremely unlikely that the State’s coastal fish stocks could ever be restored to long-term viability.
• Brad Gentner, a former chief economist for the National Marine Fisheries Service who is now a leading consultant worldwide on the economics of scarcity relating to coastal fisheries and other public natural resources, testified that the State has managed its coastal fish stocks unsustainably and, in addition, has failed to properly consider the overall public economic interest in coastal fisheries resource management. He testified about how this failure has resulted in the State missing out on a potential economic gain of more than a billion dollars. He further testified that ironically, the State’s efforts to protect commercial fishing interests have actually caused the overfishing of managed stocks that makes it largely impossible for commercial fishermen to make a living in North Carolina. As the only economics expert who will be testifying during the trial, Mr. Gentner’s testimony will be uncontroverted.
• Debra Fox, a sustenance fisher from New Bern, gave powerful, personal testimony about the struggles that many low-income North Carolinians face in trying to feed themselves by fishing depleted coastal fish stocks, exacerbated by restrictive size and bag limits. She testified about how meaningful it has historically been for her to know that despite the challenges of living in poverty, she still has the legal and constitutional right to harvest fish, and that “as long as I live near that water, I can feed myself . . . I will not starve.” Yet in the starkest terms possible, she forewarned that if the State continues to mismanage coastal fisheries into even deeper decline, her already marginalized legal and constitutional right to harvest fish will eventually become completely meaningless, and “there is no other option for me . . . to feed myself.”

CCA NC and the other 89 plaintiffs finished presenting their witnesses on Friday, which means that the State will present its witnesses next week. After a brief recess on Monday, February 9, the trial will resume on Tuesday, February 10.