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Organism threatens fishing on southern Outer Banks
By SUSAN WEST  An
organism that has brought commercial fishing off the southern Outer
Banks to a near standstill looks like seagrass but may actually be an
animal.“We’re not 100 percent sure, but it looks like it is sauerkraut bryozoan,” said Terri Kirby Hathaway, education specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant, from her Manteo office in early October. Hathaway said scientists with the state Division of Marine Fisheries have collected specimens for positive identification. Sauerkraut bryozoan (zoobotryon verticillatum) is a tiny water animal that forms colonies in warm and tropical waters in the western Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. The animal has tentacles, a gizzard, and colonies usually have a clear or milky color. A fisherman on the beach near Hatteras Inlet said that the organism reminded him of the artificial grass used in Easter baskets. Another said that when she first saw it on the beach, she thought it was a clump of monofilament fishing line. Often mistaken for seagrass, bryozoans are sometimes called moss animals or sea mats. Gene Ballance, a commercial fisherman on Ocracoke Island, said the characteristics of the organism he has seen in Pamlico Sound are consistent with descriptions of sauerkraut bryozoans. “And when it dries, it smells terrible, like sewage or a dead animal,” Ballance said. South of Ocracoke, fishermen in Core Sound call the organism “animal grass” for that very reason. Bradley Styron, a fisherman and seafood dealer in Cedar Island, said fishermen in his area first noticed “animal grass” two or three years ago, but never in the abundance they have seen this year. “We have a bad problem down here,” he said. Ballance said no one on Ocracoke remembers seeing the organism before now. “It’s been a real disaster for fishing,” Ballance said. The organism clogs nets, reducing the number of fish caught, and weighs down nets to the point where they tear. Some Ocracoke pound netters have pulled their nets out of the water altogether, even though the prime fall flounder fishing season is underway. “Some of the guys down here are holding off setting their nets, but that’s a risk too because they could miss that first blow that usually brings the fish,” Styron said from Cedar Island. In the ocean, fishermen have reported seeing the organism as far as 15 miles offshore. “I’ve seen it from right up to just on the other side of Diamond Shoals to at least seven miles below Ocracoke Inlet,” said Rene Stoffel, an ocean gillnetter who works out of Hatteras. Stoffel said the impact has been “almost crippling” for gillnetters in his area. Fishermen on the northern Outer Banks haven’t reported problems. “I was in Wanchese the other day and no one up there knew what I was talking about when I told them about the problems we’re having down here in Ocracoke,” said Ballance. Hathaway said higher than normal water temperatures might account for the abundance in the southern areas of the Outer Banks. “You have to have a critical temperature for things like this to happen,” agreed Ballance. He believes very high salinity levels in the sound may have played a role, and also notes that the area hasn’t experienced any storms this fall. “We’re just hoping that this stuff will disappear rapidly when weather conditions change,” Ballance said. 
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