As fish drift south, New England boats bump Dixie docks

After a lifetime on the water, native New Englander Walter Matheson has settled in behind the counter at a Beaufort marina, where he supports fishing "troops" with pep talks. Unlike most winters, this year the cramped office adorned with wacky pictures (a horse nibbling at a kayak) is crawling with fishermen. "This time of year, we used to put a fuzzy Santa Claus in the window with a sign that said, 'See you next year,' " says Mr. Matheson, the wit of the marina. "Now the phone's ringing [it does, on command] and a lot of activity is being generated."

On the water, the two fleets call each other's handles on the CB as they chase tuna. After a long day, they rub elbows in smoky harbor taverns, as the New Englanders pick up local fishing tips and the Southern boatmen learn the complicated business of the international tuna trade.

At Homer Smith's fish house, Bostonian Jason Bahr, a buyer, takes time to show the Southern fishermen tricks for measuring a tuna's girth and how to tell a well-marbled fish from an exhausted one - all key to fetching high prices.

And as a reminder to the true danger of their calling, a tragedy also bonded the fleets: On the first day out, a New Jersey man, fishing alone, hooked a big tuna. But a harpoon line got wrapped around his ankle. He was pulled overboard and drowned. Local fishermen took up a collection for the New Jersey man.

"Right now, I'm just glad they're here. I talk to 'em on the water, and they're all good guys," says Mike Butler, a black-bearded North Carolinian who spent an hour and a half landing a 250 pound tuna. "They're the professionals. We're learning tricks from them."

Clearly, one reason for the calm is the respect many Dixie skippers harbor toward their Northern counterparts. While the North Carolina fishermen were busy towing shrimp seines through muddy coastal waters, New England fishermen took a lead role in developing the nation's tuna fishery, now regulated by a bicameral international commission. "If it weren't for the Northern tuna fishermen, we wouldn't have anything to argue about," says Jerry Schill, director of the North Carolina Fishery Association.

Part of the reason for the uniting of the fleets, however, is the still-mysterious shifting migration patterns of the tuna. Scientists have yet to figure out how the fish operate: Are there two stocks - one off the northern Atlantic, the other part of a Mediterranean population? Or is it all just one huge swirling family?

New England fishermen have their own theories. They blame factory trawlers for taking too much herring out of the Gulf of Maine, forcing the tuna to search for more plentiful waters for food. The thick shoals of menhaden and shad that flock around Cape Lookout may be doing the trick. The National Marine Fisheries Service is commissioning new research into the phenomenon. "When the bluefin are in the Northeast on their migratory route, they seem to be further offshore, and when they come further South, they become bigger fish," says Susan Buchanan of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Silver Spring, Md. "So far, we're not sure exactly what's happening."

For their part, environmentalists aren't convinced the Christmas fishery is good - and see the chase off North Carolina as damaging to a vulnerable tuna population. "Boats are coming from all over the East Coast, targeting a species at its lowest spawning stock biomass in some time, and killing them at record rates," says Mr. Whittle. "That doesn't recover a population of fish."

On this day many fishermen, in fact, aren't seeing their rods bend. "We haven't made our fuel back yet," says Patrick Woods, a novice fisherman from Cape Cod. "We'll stay until we do."

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