09/18/2025
A history of the Carteret Catch Fisherman's Village at Jack's
With a grant from the Ford Foundation to Carteret Community College in 2003, some local volunteers created and unveiled Carteret Catch in 2005 at the NC Seafood Festival Coastal Yesterday education area to increase the public’s awareness of the seafood that is harvested by Carteret County fishermen. The mission of Carteret Catch has always been to recognize the county restaurants and retailers that sell local seafood and to sustain the county’s commercial fishing industry through promotion and public education.
In 2007, Carteret Catch began a partnership with the NC Seafood Festival to expand on a local seafood tasting and education program the Carteret Catch board had created two years earlier. This area was called “Cooking with the Chefs: A North Carolina Seafood Experience.” Festival attendees got to sample fresh, local seafood prepared by chefs across eastern North Carolina, and they also learned about the seasonality of commercial species and the challenges our fishermen have making local seafood available to the folks who want it. This program won two awards for “Best Educational Program in 2011 and “Best Event Within an Exiting Festival” in 2009 and remains a prime festival attraction to this day.
Unfortunately, a proposed partnership between several organizations with the festival board fell apart over disagreements about the direction of public education on commercial fishing, so since 2014, Carteret Catch has been holding its own educational program at Jack’s Waterfront Bar. Our “Fisherman’s Village” event has always operated independent of the festival, and we invite the public learn more about commercial fishing by touring a shrimp trawler, explore the variety of commercial species our fishermen harvest, taste seafood prepared by Down East fishermen and their wives, and see exhibits that talk about harvest methods, species seasonality and quality and how to handle seafood safely at home. Carteret Catch holds its event on the first Saturday of October because that is the best-attended day of festival weekend where we can connect with people from across North Carolina as well as other Mid-Atlantic states.
The Carteret Catch board invites you to visit this year’s Fisherman’s Village event where the theme will be appreciating and protecting the NC sh*****ng industry.
