Barbara Garrity-Blake

Barbara Garrity-Blake, cultural anthropologist, teaches Marine Fisheries Policy at the Duke University Marine Laboratory as well as a Marine Planning training workshop. She has participated in numerous advocacy and public scholarship projects with the National Park Service, NOAA, Carteret Catch, and the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center. She was Governor-appointee to the state Marine Fisheries Commission. She recently helped run a NC Sea Grant-funded leadership training program for young commercial fishermen. She is past recipient of the North Carolina Folklore Society Brown-Hudson Award.

Barbara is also a writer and musician. She is author of The Fish Factory (University of Tennessee Press), a labor history of the menhaden fishery. She is co-author of Fish House Opera (Mystic Seaport Press) and Road at the Water’s Edge (University of North Carolina Press), about the maritime heritage of North Carolina. She and her husband Bryan, a boat builder, play in a Cajun-Zydeco band, and organize two annual festivals in their Down East community of Gloucester: the Gloucester Mardi Gras and Wild Caught Local Seafood and Music Festival.