After Hurricane Florence, fishermen reel in a lot of debris

“It just has to be done,” Captain Tim Simpson proclaimed as he pulled away from a dock in Swansboro. He and a small group of commercial fishermen signed on to help clean up Hurricane Florence debris still in the water and along the shoreline.

The debris can be a danger to both people and wildlife.

"This is Huggins Island, part of Hammocks Beach State Park,” Simpson said as he pointed to the wooded shoreline.

“This area in particular had more debris than anywhere else.”

As the bow of the boat slid up the sandy beach, Joseph Sewell, Sr., stood on the deck and surveyed the island.

"Looks like a good part to start,” he announced to the rest of the team.

With a black plastic bag in his left hand and a long picker in his right, Sewell started his skewed treasure hunt. “We're trying to remove all debris of any kind,” he said, reaching for a light bulb half-buried in seaweed.

As a commercial shell fisherman, Sewell makes his living in the waters of this area.

“I kind of consider it cleaning the office, every once in a while you gotta do it," he said. “I'm not only doing it to benefit me and others, but also my wallet."

The “office," as he called it, was closed for a while after Florence, hitting commercial fishermen hard. Cleaning the land helps Sewell make up for lost wages.

Rachel Bisesi coordinates the clean-up. It's a project funded with $400,000 from the state appropriations.

"I think a lot of the smaller stuff is consumer waste that has been washed out from the mainland,” Bisesi said of paper cups and plastic soda bottles.

Meanwhile, Simpson loaded some of the larger objects into a boat to be hauled back to a waiting dumpster. He hoisted a small refrigerator, parts of a grill and other floating pieces.

“Everything you find in a household plus," he said, referencing a metal kitchen sink and table he put in the boat. “It doesn't take long to fill this boat up,” he shouted over the clang of debris filling the boat.

At the same time, Sewell started filling his second bag of the morning.

“As you can see, the debris is everywhere,” he pointed out.

He looked back at the area he already cleaned and said, “I am proud to be a part of this.”

Back in the boat and headed for the dock, Capt. Simpson looked out at the dredge spoil islands and proclaimed proudly, “These islands have probably not been this clean since they were formed back in the 1930 for the Intracoastal Waterway.”

Soon, a marine salvage company will make a second sweep of the area, picking up large debris and some sunken boats. So far, more than 13,000 pounds of trash have already been gathered.