- It's kind of our job as a conservation hatchery to put ourselves out of business.

Our goal is to raise enough striped bass and figure out the problems so that we won't have to do it anymore.

- Historically, striped bass are documented as an abundant source of food in North Carolina.

But by the 1960s, overfishing and pollution in their spawning and nursery waters resulted in back-to-back years where the population wasn't replenishing itself.

Today, water quality protection and restocking efforts by hatcheries like the Edenton National Fish Hatchery in Edenton, North Carolina, support commercial and sport striped bass fisheries that were valued at over $14 million in 2023.

- My name is Sam Pollock.

I'm the assistant manager here at the Edenton Fish Hatchery and I'm the lead biologist on the striped bass program.

These are a very popular sport fish.

They're Atlantic striped bass.

And the rivers that we raise them for, it is a restoration effort.

We know that they would only be out there for so many years if we weren't restocking them.

We get brood stock from the Neuse and the Tar River.

These are all our Neuse River phase ones for the year.

We've brought them in and we're feeding them.

They're about an inch or two long.

And right now in the hatchery, we have approximately 160,000 striped bass.

- Wait, how many?

- Approximately 160,000 striped bass.

Those 160,000 fish are tiny.

Like Sam said, they're phase one size, which means they're little fingerlings.

He scoops them up for us to see just how small they are.

These little fish are fed and cared for in these holding tanks until they're ready to go back out into bigger ponds at the hatchery that are filled and emptied depending on what's being raised there.

They'll stay and grow in these ponds through the summer and fall.

- And then late fall, early winter, we drain them and stock them out in the designated rivers where their parents came from.

The state and game agencies will regulate catches and things of that nature, size, slot limits, in hopes that they have a better brood class out there in the river.

So until then, we supplement the fish so that there are fish that'll go out and spawn in the rivers.

They don't see the proper recruitment where they don't find the small fry or the little striped bass.

So we help the fish get over that hump until they can figure out what's happening in the rivers.

If we can figure out the striped bass, then there will always be another river or another species or another project for conservation.