Will this seafood market take another hard hit?

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH, NC (WWAY) — Hurricane Florence took five months of business from Motts Channel Seafood and, with potential for Dorian to hit our coast, could their business take yet another hit?

“You just have to prepare because you just don’t know,” Allison Long, owner, said. “You don’t know what the storm is going to do, so you can’t really take that risk.”

Long owns Motts Channel Seafood and has weather a host of tropical storms dating back to the 90s. But, with memories from Hurricane Florence so fresh, staff is worried the business could take another hit.

“I was out of a job for 5 months after Florence and that was unfortunate,” Branson Best, assistant manager, said. She adds that she is more worried about the fishing industry from commercial fishers to the fish livelihood.

“The chemicals from anything people use in their yard [in the runoff]…could kill any of the fish,” Best said.

For now, Best says her priority is getting rid of the fresh fish they just received.

“We got super prepared for Labor Day,” Best said. “We were hoping we were going to be super busy and then it ended up being kind of nasty weather and rainy so we didn’t end up selling as much fish we wanted to so we’re sitting on about 5,000 lbs of fish right now that we don’t know what to do with.”

Long says, if it’s not gone by end of day on Tuesday, they’ll have to ship it up north.

As fish sales continue through late Tuesday, she shes she’ll also be eyeing the marina slip because all renters need to take action.

“They have to move their boats to safety cause the boats can do so much damage to our docks and other boats,” Long said.

Long says all boats should be out by Tuesday afternoon.

There is still a lot of uncertainty on Dorian’s exact track. Any adjustment can make a big difference in what impacts coastal communities will have.