COASTAL FISHERIES LAWSUIT HEADS TO TRIAL

The fight to save North Carolina’s coastal fisheries heads to trial in a Wake County courtroom next week. On January 20, 2026, more than five years after the lawsuit was filed, a multi-week trial will begin in the closely watched lawsuit seeking to hold the State accountable for failing to meet its legal duty to protect and preserve North Carolina’s once-abundant coastal fisheries.

The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina (CCA NC) and a group of nearly 90 citizen plaintiffs, including five former members of North Carolina’s Marine Fisheries Commission. The State of North Carolina is the defendant. In the more than five years since the case was filed, the plaintiffs have prevailed at every stage of the proceedings, including against a motion from the State to dismiss the case, an appeal by the State to the Court of Appeals, and another motion by the State to end the case before trial.

In its unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals in 2022 ruled in favor of the plaintiffs that the State has a legal obligation to preserve critical fish species for the public’s benefit. As the court explained, the State has “an affirmative duty . . . to preserve the people’s right to fish and harvest fish,” which includes a “duty to preserve fisheries for the benefit of the public” and a “duty to keep fisheries safe from injury, harm, or destruction for all time.”

For more information: https://ccanc.org/lawsuit/

MOREHEAD CITY – It’s called Big Red, a 33-inch Red Drum swimming along the East Coast with a satellite tag affixed to its body. Ironically, Big Red’s nearly 3-foot length categorizes it in the smaller/younger adult category of Red Drum, but the information that it gives researchers is of no small significance.

Big Red is one of 33 Red Drum tagged this year by The Red Drum Satellite Tagging Project, a partnership between N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries and the North Carolina Marine & Estuary Foundation. The tracking information, which includes location and water temperature, may teach researchers more about Red Drum stock structure (potential mixing of northern and southern populations), spawning and offshore migrations, and habitat preferences.

“This information could fill data gaps useful for coast-wide stock assessments, such as adult offshore movements, and it could support conventional tagging migration data with more detailed information,” said Division Biologist Cara Kowalchyk.

The Division began the Red Drum Satellite Tagging Project in 2024 with a $30,000 grant from the foundation to test tagging and information retrieval. The foundation provided another $30,000 for the second year of the project in 2025.

This year, the Division tagged 19 Red Drum, and the foundation, working with charter guides, tagged 14 more. The tags can stay on the fish for up to a year, providing key insight into seasonal movements. Now the public can watch the fish movements through a Red Drum Satellite Tracker on the Foundation’s website.

“Red Drum are an iconic symbol of North Carolina’s coastal communities and a key driver of our state’s $4 billion saltwater fishing economy,” said the foundation’s Executive Director Chad Thomas. “This exciting new tool invites the public to engage directly with real-time science from the field — to see where these fish travel and to understand why protecting their habitat matters.”

What about Big Red? It was tagged on Sept. 3, 2025, near the Pungo River. Since then, it has traveled more than 3,000 miles, remaining in the ocean, swimming to waters off northern Florida, then traveling back to waters offshore of Hatteras Inlet. Big Red is currently the frontrunner for miles traveled among the 33 satellite tagged fish.

For more information about the Divison’s participation in the Red Drum Tagging Project, contact Cara Kowalchyk at Cara.Kowalchyk@deq.nc.gov or 252-948-3875.

For More Information 
Contact: Patricia Smith
Phone: 252-515-5500