Posted on 03/28/2015 8:18:25 PM PDT by Timber Rattler
Oregon Inlet is closed to vessels drawing more than 2 feet, essentially shutting down the charter fishing fleet with four days left in the bluefin tuna season and Easter week approaching.
Petty Officer Kathryn Bruner with the Coast Guard in Wilmington said Saturday that the closing was prompted by the latest U.S. Army Corps of Engineers survey, which showed that search-and-rescue vessels can no longer get out of the inlet.
Emergencies will be handled by helicopters out of the Coast Guard’s air station in Elizabeth City, she said.
A buffer zone of 100 yards on either side of the Bonner Bridge will be enforced, she said, with fines for violators of $32,500. There was no estimate on how long the closing will last.
Warning of the potential for “catastrophic damage” to the Bonner Bridge, the Coast Guard assumed broader power to regulate boat traffic in Oregon Inlet in December. It allows the Coast Guard to establish a “temporary regulated navigation area” if conditions warrant it. This is the first time.
The federal channel running under the navigation span of the Bonner Bridge has been impassable for weeks, and boaters have been finding unmarked passages under spans farther south.
Word of the closing quickly spread.
Charley Pereira, president of the Southeast Bluefin Tuna Association, said that charter fishermen are so furious that they are discussing an “organized blockade” at the courthouse in Manteo on Monday.
“If we can’t work, they can’t work,” he said.
Four days are left in the commercial bluefin season – which has been hopping — and charter trips are booked heavily in April and May. “It’s just insane that they would do this,” Pereira said.
Pereira said that local captains know their way around the shoaling, finding routes ranging from 8 feet to 35 feet deep. Charter boats need 3 to 5 feet.
“We’ve been getting out every day,” he said. “It’s easy — you go out there and look. You can see where the shoals are.”
One boat heads out first thing in the morning, finds the good water and radios everyone, he said. Captains have been using the “Big Block” — an area about 12 spans from the main span — as a reference point.
A Coast Guard statement later in the day said that the Army Corps of Engineers plans to send a dredge within the week.
I thought the oceans were rising.
Orders from Captain Midnight.
What’s wrong with the Bonner Bridge?
Just finished reading some other stories, and it looks like the boat underpass at center span has severe shoaling and needs dredging. Problem is that the Obama regime and Congress has so screwed up the military budget (with sequestration) that the Corps of Engineers can no longer afford to carry out its longstanding function of keeping America’s navigable waterways navigable.
What are North Carolina fishermen doing in Oregon?! ... LOL ...
Or it could be that the Corps of Engineers and EPA have been too busy trying to regulate every dry depression in the ground that turns into a mud puddle when it rains that they don't have the manpower or money to do what they should be doing.
The Army Corps of Engineers came up with the “migratory molecule” rule, which says that even isolated wetlands fall under federal jurisdiction because there is a theoretical chance that a water molecule from any location may reach a navigable waterway.
It’s Obama’s fault for lowering the oceans.
Everyone of us with an SUV owes it to this industry to leave our engines running all night. We have got to raise the ocean level and float all boats.
Its the American thing to do.
The Coast Guard can’t wait four more days?
Climate change event—we’re going to hear it.
I don’t understand.
I thought Globull warming was suppose to make sea levels rise.
Wouldn’t it be easier to ingress/egress this inlet?
/S
Ocean levels rising = Climate Change.
Ocean levels dropping = Climate Change.
Ocean levels remaining the same = Climate Change.
Obama Twain
“Feds throwing North Carolina fishermen out of work this week.”
Feds throwing American fishermen out of work week, part of an ongoing, decades long, daily, national campaign.
Oregon Inlet was not created until the hurricane of 1846, and like other inlets of the NC Outer Banks, nature never intended it to be permanent. The boat captains have found other avenues to the open waters, following the natural signs as they’ve been doing for centuries. Why does the Fed Govt have to be involved at all?
Red October is now trapped in the sound
Cuz everyone thinks they’re a chef?
Transfer the corps of engineers budget from the DOD to Homeland Security, under Obama’s current appointees there, and even the Dims will give it more funding. Whether or not it truly needs more funding, or better arrangement of its priorities is another question.
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