SEA LEVEL - Landlubbers were driving Model T Fords in 1919 when the Carteret County fishing boat "Old Salt" began plying the waters of Core Sound in Carteret County.

Model T's have long since gone to scrap heaps, museums or private collectors. But the boat, now 89, is still hauling nets and loads of fish for commercial fisherman Danny Mason of Sea Level.

"She still works," said Mason, 58. "I don't know of any boat in my lifetime that works any better."

The boat, built in the nearby community of Atlantic, is thought to be the oldest Core Sound work boat still on the water. Characterized by a flared bow and shallow bottom, the boats were the workhorses of the waterways on the central coast.

Although vestiges of the design remain, the old boats are being relegated to photographs and memories.

"They're disappearing very fast," said Mike Alford, a maritime historian and former curator of the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

Commercial fishing is rough on boats, he said, and one that lasts more than 50 years is rare.

The boats and their contribution to maritime heritage will be featured today in a symposium and photo exhibit at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

Larry Earley, symposium project manager, said fishing boats have played an important role in the Down East region in eastern Carteret County for almost two centuries. The boats shared many features but also illustrated local traditions and styles of individual boat builders.

The museum will display 40 of Earley's black-and-white photos of boats and fishermen, including Mason. Earley also will discuss Ambrose Fulcher, whom he calls "the man who built a thousand boats." Fulcher, who died in 1952, was one of the most prolific of all Down East boatbuilders, Earley said, yet his contributions to Core Sound's boatbuilding heritage have been overlooked.

For Mason, who has three fishing boats built before 1940, keeping old boats is partly sentimental and partly practical.

One wooden boat, built in 1936, is named "Haul Boat." He uses it for long-haul fishing in which a net is strung out to encircle fish. Fishermen aboard smaller skiffs help tighten the net, and the fish are lifted from the net to the bigger boat with a dip net.

Mason's stepfather bought "Old Salt," then known as "Aliene," in the mid-1960s and later passed it on to him. Like his other boats, it is not a museum showpiece but a working vessel that has been modified a number of times with new engines and other parts. Originally built of juniper, or Atlantic white cedar, the boat now sports a fiberglass-covered hull to reduce leaks.

Judging by appearance, Old Salt lives up to its name. The white paint is chipped, worn and stained with rust. The pilot house is cluttered, clunky and weatherworn.

But Mason likes the curved stern, which makes it easier to back up, and the way the steep bow sits down the water, especially in strong wind and waves.

"She's so sharp in the bow and so steep in the bow, she splits the seas," he says. "This one, you can open up in bad weather."

Mason, a Carteret County native who speaks with the melodious brogue of the Down East waterside communities, has been fishing for a livelihood since he was 16. He runs his boats from April to November, filling the deck on good days with spot and other finfish. He catches flounder in the winter and also harvests oysters.

He worries about the future of an industry beset by poor prices, skimpy harvests and the loss of coastal fish houses that handle the catches. For instance, he said, fuel prices are skyrocketing while prices paid to fishermen are stuck in the old days.

If things don't change, he said, fishermen will disappear along with the hardy, wooden boats.