The Hive Is Winning—and North Carolina’s Watermen Are Paying the Price Part 2
Along the North Carolina coast, a quiet crisis is unfolding. It’s not another hurricane, not another federal shutdown, not even another fishery disaster declaration. It’s something more deliberate, more structural, and far easier for lawmakers to deny responsibility for: the steady displacement of North Carolina’s working watermen by a political ecosystem called the Hive—the dense network of large PACs, corporate donors, and industry groups that increasingly shape coastal policy from far inland.
The Hive does not use boats. It does not mend nets, repair motors, or rise at 3 a.m. to beat the tide. It does not bury fathers lost at sea or send sons back onto the water because “this is what our family has always done.”
But the Hive has money. And in modern politics, money speaks louder than heritage.
These organizations represent interests and large corporate PACs whose priorities have little to do with the people who actually work the water. They want clean viewsheds, expanded marinas, lucrative shoreline development, and waterways optimized for recreation rather than labor. And for them, the presence of shrimp trawlers—noisy, gritty, smelly, proudly working-class—gets in the way of both the scenery and the profit model.
None of this is illegal. None of it requires conspiracy. All of it is predictable.
Commercial fishermen do not have PACs with seven-figure war chests. They do not host luxury fundraisers. They do not have teams of lobbyists crafting legislation that purports to promote environmental stewardship but functions as real estate asset protection.
Watermen bring something far less valuable to the political marketplace: hard work, cultural memory, and the stubborn belief that coastal communities should be allowed to remain self-sufficient.
And that, increasingly, is not enough.
We have been here before. In the 20th century, as the American whaling industry collapsed, federal policy protected whales—an unquestionably noble aim—but offered no protection for the whaling towns themselves. By the time policymakers realized their oversight, foreign fleets had already taken the lead, leaving entire communities along the American coast without a viable economic future.
The folk-rock group Country Joe & the Fish captured this contradiction in their ironic anthem “Save the Whales”:
“Save the whales, and save the seals / But save the people from themselves.”
The line lands harder each decade, because it asks the question policymakers still avoid: Who saves the people whose livelihoods are sacrificed to make policy victories possible?
Protecting species is essential. But protecting communities is essential.
North Carolina’s herring communities once thrived every spring as blueback and alewife surged inland. Festivals grew around these runs. Entire towns timed their economy to the river’s pulse. Then came the decline—part environmental, part regulatory, part systemic neglect. The most affected were those with the least political clout.
Now shrimpers fear they are next. After them, perhaps crabbers. After them, net fishermen. After them, anyone whose boat doesn’t fit neatly into a marina brochure.
The poet Martin Niemöller’s haunting refrain echoes here:
First they came for the herring, and I did not speak out… Then they came for the shrimpers…
If we silence each working waterfront community in turn, soon none will remain.
A coastal economy without watermen is not a coastal economy. It is a waterfront theme park—a place where seafood is imported, heritage is packaged, and families once proud of their independence are pushed into economic dependency.
If North Carolina continues down this path, we must ask a blunt question: Will our future watermen be forced into the same kind of government-dependency cycles we see in other regions where traditional industries collapsed—Section 8 housing, lost self-sufficiency, multigenerational poverty hidden behind beach-town tourism?
Is that the legacy the General Assembly intends to leave?
If lawmakers insist on prioritizing big-money donors over coastal families, perhaps it’s time for a simple reform: Outlaw business suits in the legislature and require every elected official to wear NASCAR-style uniforms displaying the logos of their most significant corporate and PAC contributors.
Let the public see, in real time, who sponsors the Hive.
Political transparency shouldn’t require forensic accounting. A jacket full of patches would tell the truth far faster.
North Carolina stands at a crossroads. We can follow the path of the Hive—toward more development, more imported seafood, more recreation-based coastal economies, and fewer working families. Or we can choose to protect the people who have harvested these waters for generations.
The Hive is loud. Watermen are quiet.
But one cannot eat viewsheds, and one cannot build a community on tourism alone.
If we abandon the watermen, we leave the coast.
And when the last working boat leaves the harbor, no bill—no matter how green the language or noble the intent—will bring back what the Hive has taken.