File

advertisement
We Come in Peace: Invasion by Commercial Fishing and
Tourism of Harkers Island and Shackleford Banks
Harkers Island is filled with 28,500 acres of undeveloped barrier islands only
accessible by boat. Surrounded by two large bodies of water, the Core Sound and the
Westmouth Bay, Harkers Island has become one of the largest nature reserves in
North Carolina, with a steady population in Banker Ponies, only located in this
particular region. The lush environment and relaxing atmosphere invites families and
wildlife to live harmoniously within nature. But when this harmony is interrupted, it leads
to less-than-peaceful solutions.
The invasion of one’s home land and territory is neither a pleasant nor yearned for
experience. The presence of unwanted strangers can have a personal and
environmental impact on a person’s life and surroundings. Expansion of small towns is
typically considered apart of economic growth but can actually lead to an extreme
amount of unwanted invasion. In turn, this causes generations upon generations of
families to feel overrun, and the spiraling decline of commercial fishing in places where
it naturally thrives. While politicians and large businesses attempt to convince the
people that expansion is beneficial both socially and economically, the reality is that
small communities can be devastated by growth. Carmine Prioli depicts the lives of
many local ‘Ca’e Bankers’ and the way economic growth has affected their families,
jobs, and lives in his book Hope for a Good Season; The Ca’s Bankers of Harkers
Island. Prioli accomplishes his task to inform by appealing to the reader with well-stated
factual information, personal remarks made by the local Ca’e Bankers, and
photographic evidence of the past and present development of Harkers Island.
Harkers Island, North Carolina, contains hundreds of years of history in it’s
relatively small coastal town. According to Prioli, the habitants of Harkers Island “call
themselves ‘Ca’e Bankers’, a popular contradiction signifying the descendants of men
and women who lived in the ever-changing worlds of Cape Lookout and Shackleford
Banks.” Giving these specific persons a different title than the average shore men
creates a more personal defining relationship between the reader and the people of
the island. By using the natives’ term throughout the book, this establishes a deeper
connection between the reader and the Ca’e Bankers, making the reader feel more
like an insider than simply the audience.
Prioli also states in his foreword that “…survival depends upon adjustment to
changing circumstances.” An in-depth look at the term “adjustment” gives the reader
more insight into Prioli’s rational argument that the local Bankers are being replaced by
more than just the wind and the sea that has taken its toll on their ancestors from
centuries ago. Adjustment has become a newly adopted ritual to the local islanders out
of necessity, rather than choice. With the growth and development of Harkers Island
comes the competition of businesses and large fishing companies that have blown
family-owned fishing docks and stores—literally—out of the water. Prioli’s personal
concern with this island gives the reader a sense that this is more than just a story
about an author’s hometown being overpopulated; it is about a town and it’s local
inhabitants being overrun by tourists with no historical connections and who ruin the act
of‘simple living’ by bombarding the island with growth and development.
The competition of commercial fishing stems from several environmental and
social factors. Prioli states that these factors have been affecting the Bankers since the
1980s and have only progressed. The already-weakened industry declined even
further downhill with the progression of foreign competition, increased regulation and
licensing fees, fuel costs, and the abundance of part-time commercial and sports
fishermen. The people of the island knew something had to be done; their solutions to
the problem included banning inshore and near shore net fishing. In 1995, the North
Carolina Fisheries Association Auxiliary, an organization made up of wives, mothers,
sisters, and girlfriends of commercial fishermen, called a meeting to discuss the
proposed ban on net fishing. They announced: “If you wish to fish with a net you are
now looking down the barrel of a gun: what are you going to do about it? Come to our
next meeting and join forces” (50). This clever and to-the-point directive defined every
southern Ca’e Bankers repressed feelings about net fishing and their dedication to
terminating it.
The Ca’e Bankers knew that banning net fishing was not going to be an easy
task; Prioli highlights one local fisherman, Peter Willis, and his statement: “…it’s getting
harder every year and things are getting more complicated. There’s going to be more of
us [fishermen] and we’re getting right much plagued with the Yankees, you know, to be
honest with it” (50). The term ‘yankees’ is used by the Ca’e Bankers to address
everyone who lives north of Harkers Island but migrates south after making their state’s
fishing quotas. These ‘yankees’ are not the only foreign travelers the Ca’e Bankers
have to worry about; Northern crabbers also travel from places as far as Florida to
capitalize on the North Carolinian waters, leading to serious economic consequences
for local fishermen and watermen.
To the Ca’e Bankers, the fishing industry is a means for survival; it is the main job
on the island and provides food to surrounding families, as well as income for them to
live off. According to Prioli, these outsiders not only threaten the economy and the local
natives’ means for survival, but they also “upset the subtle balance that for years has
existed between nature’s capacity to produce a resource and the local fisherman’s need
for…that resource” (51). The communities of Harkers Island and the surrounding
coastal towns have an essential need for the sea life; they depend on the fishermen
and the supply that nature provides for them every year. For hundreds of years, the
fishing industry has been a reliable source with many forms, depending on the seasons.
For the invading outsiders, fishing in these limited coastal waters is merely extra profit.
They sail into town with huge shrimp and fishing vessels and overpower the local
fishing company’s smaller boats. One local fisherman made the remark that these
outsiders’ greed is “…bringing us down quick. It’s doing away with everything. Where
we set two or three hundred [crab] pots, they’ve got to set a thousand pots” (51). This
occupation has now become a test for survival of the fittest, where natives must catch
more fish than the outsider in order to provide for themselves and their families.
However, the overcrowding of Harkers Island cannot solely be blamed on these
‘yankee’ fishermen. Prioli states that throughout the years, there has been an alarming
increase in the amount of tourists, summer vacationers, and year-round permavacationers (or retired people). For about three to four months out of the year, usually in
the warmer weather time, the population of these visitors nearly doubles the measly
1,600 locals that have permanent bonds to the island. This influx has led to a real
estate crisis all over the island—small sound-side cottages rent for about $700-800 a
week during the summertime, and property values increase everywhere, along with tax
rates. Home ownership for young couples and families has become almost
unattainable. Prioli cites several examples of real estate influx, some of the most
alarming being “Land purchased by the acre for one dollar in 1900 sold recently for
$30,000. What little side property is available commands $1,000 per foot of waterfront.
And half-acre parcels of land on property where Ebenezer Harker’s home once stood
can be had for $125,000 apiece” (52).
The lifestyle of the Ca’e Banker includes far more than just fishing; these locals
have made adjustments in their everyday lives. Despite the loss of property and
pastimes, the Ca’e Bankers have learned to adapt to their new, expanding lives on the
shores of Harkers Island. Some have turned to model boat building, some to decoy
carving; any job that will pay the bills and attract attention from the most populated
persons in town—tourists. Other locals continue to build their own boats, and set and
repair their own crab pots and pound nets. The culture in which they were raised still
resides in their minds and hearts, and they will continue to pass on their techniques,
traditions, and talents to generations to come. Prioli points out the optimistic attitude of
one local fisherman in his statement, “…we live from one season to the next. We hope!
We hope for a good season and that takes you to the next one… and so you live on
hope more than you do on money” (52).
But optimism can only last so long before the Ca’e Bankers are forced to look for
alternatives. In his book, One Life at a Time, Please, Edward Abbey provides several
unconventional solutions to overpopulation and overcrowding. Abbey states that
“growth, they tell us, means more jobs, more bank accounts, more cars, more people,
leading in turn to the demand for more jobs, more economic expansion, more industrial
development” (20). Whether the expanding town of Harkers Island or Abbey’s example
of the growth in Tucson, Arizona, Abbey questions when will this spiraling process of
growth comes to a rational end, or of equilibrium? The effects of growth are not always
positive, evidenced by Harkers Island. In the case of Tucson and Harkers Island,
growth leads to more people, fewer jobs, and an expansion of industrial development
to the point that it becomes unaffordable. But what happens when there is no more
land to expand on? No more jobs to be had?
Abbey compares growth to the ideology of a cancer cell: “Cancer has no purpose
but growth; but it does have another result—the death of its host” (21). To him, it is
obviously apparent that the increase of growth does not solve economic issues like
unemployment, crime, traffic, poverty, or water and air pollution. To accommodate the
growth of Harkers Island, habitants would have to sacrifice certain luxuries such as the
bright blue sky, the clean air, the open space, the abundant wildlife, and the sheer
delight of physical freedom, all of which originally attracted the inhabitants to Harkers
Island.
In Abbey’s final discussion of solutions to the rising issue of growth, he states that
“growth, they say, is inevitable. There is nothing, they say, we can do about it…this is
the baldest lie of them all” (23). Abbey posits that elected officials should carry the
blame of growth, since they in fact, dictate how much and how quickly expansion
occurs. The government also has the power to take away land dictated to another
purpose. One example of this occurred in 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson signed
Public Law 89-366, allowing legislation for the Cape Lookout National Seashore. Under
the bill, 30,000 acres of land stretching from Ocracoke Inlet to Beaufort Inlet would be
turned over to the federal government. This enabled the land to be bought out by the
National Park Service and to be developed into an ‘exquisite’ seashore. Prioli states that
the National Park Service estimates “by the fifth year of operation, more than a million
annual visitors living within 250 airline miles of the North Carolina coast would be
romping through their ‘Bicentennial’ seashore park at Cape Lookout” (Prioli 34).
Prioli continues to inform that this bill took action in the late 1970s when the
government filed condemnation proceedings to clear the title of 2,369 acres of
Shackleford Banks and another 2,000 acres of marshland. Most of the cottages on this
land were owned by locals who had passed down the property for generations and had
been an important part of these people’s lives for many years. Whether or not that is
the case, the government gave them their one-choice ultimatum and a sum of money
as a settlement to give up their land and homes. According to the park service
guidelines, to designate Shackleford as ‘wilderness,’ the existence of all human activity
must be “substantially absent.” This not only gave permission to eliminate man-made
structures, but also the removal of domesticated animals, including sheep, goats, and
cattle defined as ‘exotic’ and not indigenous to the area.
Local residents of Harkers Island and Shackleford Banks deemed these
approaches by government and park services as “insensitive to the preservation of their
lifestyle and heritage” (Prioli 37). The natural beauty of the lands and the history of their
previous generations were forcibly removed without their consent, and many thought of
these decisions as ‘high-handed.’ In Abbey’s essay, “Eco-Defense,” he states that “if the
wilderness is our true home, and if it is threatened with invasion, pillage, and
destruction—as is certainly is—then we have the right to defend that home, as we
would our private quarters, by whatever means are necessary” (31). Although Abbey’s
statement seems a little harsh and executive, does he not have a point? To what
degree can people, invaders, the government step in and take over our lands before we
step up and do something about it? Abbey states that “we are the majority; they—the
powerful—are in the minority” (31).
Although Abbey never states specifically how to defend our home, he does state
that it “is a matter of the strategy, tactics, and technique which eco-defense is all about”
(31). Abbey assures the reader that it is a justified act—we have the right to defend our
homes and by not defending what we love is a dishonorable act. He also states that
“Eco-defense means fighting back. Eco-defense means sabotage. Eco-defense is risky
but sporting; unauthorized but fun; illegal but ethically imperative” (31). In his personal
experiences, Abbey states that his Aunt Emma from West Virginia swears by the act of
“spiking trees.” To delay or completely halt the US Forest Service from conducting a
chainsaw massacre of the forest, Abbey’s aunt hammers a nail into the trunk of the tree
as a means of protection, in defending nature. Essentially, this creates a potentially
injurious mantrap for the loggers, but is completely harmless for the tree, and ensures
them a longer life. When the logger attempts to cut the tree down, the tree spike will
catch on the saw blade, causing it to break or shatter, resulting in injury to the logger.
As Abbey ensures, “It’s good for the trees, it’s good for the woods, and it’s good for the
human soul. Spread the word” (32).
In a similar occurrence, the Bankers resented the government and park officials
for taking over their residences and claiming their property; like Abbey, they also felt
that they had the right to defend their homes when threatened. Prioli states that
although many Ca’e Bankers did not have legal deeds to the land, they still carried
emotional ties within themselves and for the generations before. They considered the
island “communal property” and argued that “their camps connected them spiritually
with a past that was increasingly threatened by tourism and commercialism that were
rapidly overrunning their mainland environments” (Prioli 38). Regardless of the locals’
perseverance to keep their land, the government took control of their properties and
forced them to abandon their camps. In December of 1985, during the uproar, a
sequence of uncanny fires occurred—which were thought to be connected to the angry
islanders. Several cottages were torched by their previous owners, in a means of
rebelling against the government. But Prioli states that the most shocking illegal act
came from the destruction of the Cape Lookout National Seashore visitor center,
located at the eastern end of Harkers Island. The damages and destruction of the
structure and its six years of loggerhead research studies totaled about $100,000.
Authorities were brought into the investigation and although some reports blame
the fire on faulty wiring, investigations led the police to believe that the fire had been set
intentionally. The FBI was brought into the case for further examination and two rewards
of several thousand dollars each were offered, but no one came forth and no one was
ever charged for the burning. In 1993, the park service rebuilt the visitor center and
opened its new regional office, located on Harkers Island. Prioli states that the park
service was fully aware of the negative feelings and resentment that the Bankers held
for the national park officials. Even today the feelings still reside, but some Bankers
have made civil efforts to work with park officials to establish a form of mutual bonds
between the local islanders and the federal government. Prioli states that these efforts
were established in “1993, [when] park officials and members of the Core Sound
Waterfowl Museum endorsed a Memorandum of Understanding that included a 30-year
leasing agreement for 16 acres of land at Shell Point, on the eastern tip of Harkers
Island” (39).
Although they have tried to create amends among the Ca’e Bankers, the bond will
never fully be civil between the locals and the outsiders. Abbey mocks Dianne
Feinstein, the mayor of San Francisco, when she states that “A city not growing is
dying” (60). As seen by the growing population of Harkers Island and Shackleford
Banks, the expansion has become more of a burden on the local residents and their
territory than an accommodation. In response to Mayor Feinstein’s statement, Abbey
says, “When a city finally stops growing its citizens can finally begin to live. In peace.
Security. With a modicum of domestic tranquility” (60). Abbey displays quite a bit of
sarcasm and extreme solutions in his book and although his ideas may seem crazy to
many of us, to what degree will it take for this invasion to cease?
The local fishermen and their families of Harkers Island suffer from the supply
and demand ratio while their competition, large fishing companies, flourishes off their
greed ,cleaning out the ocean and the sound’s sea life. These residents have been
raided and overrun by a wide range of invaders including commercial fishermen,
tourists, and government officials but have continued to adjust. Seeing no quick fix to
their predicament, the Ca’e Bankers have learned to live with the issues and have
adapted to their new, competitive way of living until another established solution comes
their way. With the passing of one season comes their optimistic attitude and a renewed
‘hope for a good season’.
Works Cited
Abbey, Edward. One Life at a Time, Please. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1988.
Prioli, Carmine and Martin, Edwin. Hope for a Good Season: The Ca’e Bankers of
Harkers Island. John F. Blair Publisher, July 1998.
Download