Mississippi Forces Its Commercial Fishermen to Work with
Unworkable Nets in Impossible Locations
by
Robert Fritchey
2025
Mississippi’s coastal city of Biloxi was once known as “The Seafood Capital of the World.” Then the state legalized gambling and limited casinos to waterfront locations. The Coast was soon Mississippi’s fastest growing region as tourists flocked to the casinos, beaches, golf courses and restaurants. The visitors also chartered sport-fishing vessels and cast their lines with the resident anglers whose ranks were already swelling.
Meanwhile, local commercial fishermen had long netted a variety of wild fish that read like a menu and included the sumptuous Florida pompano, striped mullet or “Biloxi bacon,” Spanish mackerel, and those Gulf Coast favorites—redfish and spotted seatrout.
Knowledgeable fishery managers knew that the best way to sustain these publicly owned resources was to keep sharing them with the public. Entitled anglers had another take—they envisioned the state’s coastal waters as a resort, and their rallying cry was “Ban the Nets!”
Politics trumped science in Mississippi where net fishermen and seafood consumers lost access to all but a handful of their wild fish.
With 308 pages that include three lively oral histories of seafood industry participants Coastal Erosion is generously illustrated with dozens of black & white photos, maps and drawings. Coastal Erosion (ISBN 978-1-7346171-9-1) retails for $24.95 (paperback) from Amazon.com.
Coastal Erosion is also available as an e-book—with most photographs in color—for $9.99 from Amazon Kindle, Apple iTunes, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press.