First, the lawsuit is not being brought by CCA NC alone. CCA NC is joined by 86 individual citizen co-plaintiffs who, like CCA NC, can no longer stand by and allow the destruction of our public-trust coastal fisheries resources from the State’s failure to manage them properly. CCA has tried for many years to raise awareness concerning the longstanding, poor state of many North Carolina coastal fish stocks. The problems, their causes, and potential remedies are all identifiable. Some of those coastal fish stocks have diminished to the point their numbers cannot currently support ANY harvest. That result is not just unthinkable, it is unconscionable. At this point, there was no other option but to bring a lawsuit to hold the State accountable for failing to uphold its legal duty to citizens, and allowing commercial overexploitation and severe wastage of public-trust fisheries resources, thereby substantially impairing the public’s legal right to use those resources.