I could have, a few years ago, got out of the business and done something else, but it’s just hard to be pessimistic when you’re doing something you love. – Frank Parker
Even in a town like Biloxi, it’s not often someone can claim seven generations of fishing heritage. The line in Frank Parker’s family may have stopped at six when his parents pushed him to go to college and consider other lines of work, but the years of growing up playing on the dock had him pretty well convinced he was going to go back out onto the Gulf. So at 24 years old, 12 credits shy of graduating, Frank decided to listen to the sirens and bought himself a boat. The funny thing, though, is that his parents listened to them too. His father retired from furniture refinishing to be his deckhand, and his mother got on the boat to do the support work, and to referee when they butt heads.
A decade later, the industry is facing a crisis – shrimp prices have dropped drastically, expenses are rising, and captains and deckhands alike are bailing all around. But working with his family and selling his catch directly, Frank believes he’s still able to make it work, and he’s getting ready in case his kids one day decide they want to be generation eight.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Frank Parker, Commercial Fisherman
Date: December 1, 2008
Location: The Parker Home, Biloxi, MS
Interviewer & Photographer: Francis Lam
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Francis Lam: This is Francis Lam for the Southern Foodways Alliance. Today is Monday, December 1, 2008. I’m with Frank Parker at his home in Biloxi, Mississippi and today we’re going to be talking about his experience as a fisherman here. Will you please state your name, age, and occupation for the record?
Franklin Parker: Franklin Parker, age is 35 and I’m a commercial fisherman, a shrimper predominantly.
You mentioned the other day that you are a seventh generation Biloxi fisherman. How did you personally get involved in fishing?
It’s just something I grew up in. When I grew up in Biloxi it was a sleepy little fishing village. It was totally different than the Biloxi we have today. We knew all our neighbors. It was very small; everybody knew everything. There was really not a whole lot in Biloxi to do then other than tourism or the Air Force Base. But I just grew up playing around the docks and the wharfs. My father, he shrimped for a little while with some of my uncles but my mom didn’t really like him being gone all the time, so he had a small boat and he would fish mainly to supplement his income. So I was around it a little bit just growing up as a little kid running around the fish docks and stuff and I’d see all these boats and it was just something that just lured me; I guess you can say it was in my blood.
I actually started running—working my own boat when I was 15. It was a small boat, a 16-foot boat. My father bought it for me and I started running crab traps and catching fish. I did that all through high school. I wanted to get in the fishing business directly out of high school but my father really wanted me to go to school. But that’s how I started paying my way to college was deck handing and commercial fishing. I actually started working with one of my uncles and he was kind of like my grandpa. He was 70 when I started working with him. And he showed me a lot about the business. I got about 12 hours from my degree and I said, “Shoot on this. I don’t want to go to school.” I dropped out and bought a shrimp boat and that—24 years old and that’s what I’ve been doing since then.
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And what happened to that first boat?
It sunk at the dock. [Laughs] It was a 60-year old boat and I had a lot of pride in it. It was my first boat and I guess you could say it was a lost cause when I bought it, but I shrimped it for about three years. I made good money with the boat and I tried to put a lot of money back into it but it wasn’t enough to keep—it’s years of being fished with; it was ready to retire.
Probably the only job I’ve ever had in my life, this job opportunity come up to run a research vessel for the Gulf Coast Research Lab, so I tied the boat up. My game plan was I was going to work at the Research Lab long enough to fix my boat. I was going to live on the boat; I was single, fix the boat up and get it in top-notch shape; take all my money and put it in this boat and then quit that job and go back shrimping. Well, that weekend that I was supposed to go pick the boat up and haul it up on the shipyard, I go down there and the boat was sunk. I couldn’t get it up; it was history. So I worked there for about a year and a half and I just hated it. I mean I liked the job; I really liked the part of going out and catching different things and I learned a lot of the management side of it and different environmental things and scientific things but it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I just didn’t like the fact of working for somebody else. Like I said I’ve been working for myself since I was 15 years old. And the opportunity arose that I could buy this new boat and me and my father jumped into it head first. Don’t have no regrets at all; if you’re not making a whole lot of money but if you can pay the bills and you wake up every morning and you’re happy, what else do you want to do? Just going out there and seeing the sunrise and sunset and knowing you’re your own boss. I guess what I love the most about it just the independence.
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How far do you go and how long do you go out? You had mentioned seven to twelve days but do you go far afield when you go?
My boat I would consider would be an in-shore: lakes, bays, sounds, outside beaches. It’s a shallow water boat, 70 or 80-feet of water. I’m licensed to shrimp anywhere from Florida to Texas and these last few years we’ve been staying kind of close, you know? The way that shrimping has really changed economically in the last few years it’s hard to go off and make a lot of money because of the rising cost of fuel and your overhead. And I feel like I put my foothold and stayed in the business since I market a lot of my own product. That means trying to catch and selling a fresher shrimp and getting a higher price for it, so that means you can't go off as far with an ice boat.
We sell our shrimp to locals. It’s more of a retail market instead of wholesale, where if we go out for eight, ten, twelve days, well when we come in with our shrimp, our shrimp might be two weeks old. They’re not going to pay you nothing for the shrimp because they’re wholesale prices. Since ’02, ’03 the price of shrimp have declined drastically because of foreign imports and different things like that. So a shrimp that we were getting $8-bucks a pound for, say, 10 years ago this year we were getting $1.50. And diesel 10 years ago was 60—70-cents a gallon and this past year it was over $4 a gallon. If you can come and market your shrimp right off the boat to the public, or to different outlets that you can get lined up, you can get an average—I think we average around $4 for our shrimp instead of $1.50. So if we can come and go every few days and keep a fresher product, change the market, instead of selling straight to the wholesalers and processors, we try to sell to some different restaurants, some people who buy our shrimp and haul them up north and sell them for a profit and things like that. So that’s mainly why the last few years I’ve really—when a lot of people have been getting out of the business I have been able to remain in business because of my market.
Do you set up shop somewhere? How do you do that?
That’s where I guess the family business has come in. My father, he’s kind of semi-retired now and he’s kind of my salesman, so he goes off and tries to get sales and I’ll give him some money for selling the shrimp for me where it’s a win/win situation for everybody. But that’s really the only reason why we’ve been able to survive.
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I mean as long as my family has been in the fishing business, in the early ‘80s it was horrible. There was no shrimp; the price of shrimp was up but the fuel was relatively okay but there was just no shrimp, I guess because of biological or economical—environmental factors. There was just something but it was very, very bad in the early ‘80s. And several of my family members lost their boats and homes and stuff like that. So I mean we’ve seen bad times but it’s just—as long as there is demand for fresh shrimp I’m going to try to hang in there as long as I can.
And how was the catch this year?
I would say maybe a little above average. Last year it was extremely above average. Prior to Hurricane Katrina and Rita, there was a lot of people getting out of the business for economic reasons. Well then, when Katrina and Rita come through, that destroyed a lot of boats that operated. Because the economy of the shrimp business was so bad nobody wanted to invest a lot of money to get back into the business. Well what that means is that’s just a bigger piece of the pie. And because there’s fewer boats out there catching, they’re catching more shrimp. There’s more mom and daddies left to lay the eggs.
And talk to me a little bit about staffing and getting deckhands. I’ve talked to people over and over again who say, “I’m getting out of the business. It’s too hard to make it; it’s too hard to pay staff.” How hard is it to find people to work for you?
It’s very hard to find adequate help. Another reason why I’ve been so fortunate is because up until Hurricane Katrina my mother and father worked with me. My father was retired, my mother—they just seen it an ample opportunity when I bought my new boat back in 1998; they said, “Hey, we’re going to work with you.” The money is not as good as what it used to be, so when you bring a man out on your boat and he’s gone from his house 24-hours a day for 10 days and all he makes is $400, this isn’t a whole lot of money, you know? But like I said with me it was mainly family. Almost all of my business is family run; my wife—even my three year-old daughter, she helps ice the shrimp whenever we sell them to the public. And but I’ve been pretty fortunate; since the storm, I’ve had a lot of people that I guess we call greenhorns. They don’t know anything about the business, but that’s really some of the best help you can get. You can train them and it seems like the last three or four I’ve had has really been enjoyable. They’re really good guys; they really enjoy doing it. They make pretty decent money but all of them have been single; they’re not married and they don’t have kids, so they’re getting free room and board. You don’t have to pay rent and they’re making some money and they get to eat all the shrimp they can eat, so this is—it’s a plus. But overall it is very hard to find good help in the fishing business but I’ve been very lucky.
Where they come from? Do you have a sense of why it is that these people are here looking for this kind of work?
Well the last three workers that I’ve had have all been people that aren’t from here. There’s one guy from Nevada; he come here after Katrina to do relief work and he worked with me for about four or five months, and he really thoroughly enjoyed it. I have two now; one of them is from Virginia and he come down here after Katrina looking for work and then one is from Chicago and all of them have been working out great. It used to be well, “You’ve seen that movie Forrest Gump?” And but now, with like the Deadliest Catch and things like this, I guess it’s just allure that people see, and there’s still that sense of adventure and they’re just striking out to get your fortune. So that’s really helped the business on that aspect because like I said, everyone that’s worked for me they’ve all seen commercial fishing on TV and things like that.
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You had mentioned earlier that your parents wanted you to go to college. How did they feel when you decided, “Hey, you know, I’m going to finish with this and I’m going to go back out on the water?”
Well they was kind of disappointed but at 24 years old, you’ve got to kind of step up and say, “Okay, well look: I should have done been done with school by now.” I’ve been dragging my feet, and that’s what I told my dad. I said, “I know you want better for me and you want me to at least have an education.” But it’s all about being happy, you know? And when I bought my new boat in ’98 my father went to work with me and we have become so close since then. I mean if you’re with somebody 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you just know everything about him. We butt heads and stuff like that, but that’s just something that I wouldn’t change for anything. And I think it’s something that he always wanted to do, but like I said my mother didn’t want him gone all the time. And it’s just been one hell of a ride. [Laughs]
It’s my mother’s side of the family that we’re all fishermen, all of her brothers and father and stuff like that. My dad’s father come down here back in the ‘40s to work at the shipyard and he run a gas station. My father grew up around the fishing industry too and he had worked with my uncles and stuff but he had got into the furniture refinishing business and he did that for about 35 years. And he would also supplement his income with fishing and shrimping and stuff like that.
I guess it’s every kid’s dream. You’ve got your mother and your father on the boat with you and your mama cooks all the meals, washes the clothes, takes care of cleaning and stuff and my father, he’s my grunt; I’m the boss, you know? I mean what—what [Laughs]—what more could you be? I’m joking like that but we’re just a very family oriented people and I wouldn’t change it for anything. It was—it’s been great, the first eight—nine years I had my boat it was great with my mother and father. It really helped us both out. My father he was too young to retire, but he was really too old to if he wanted to change occupations to be a viable asset to somebody that wanted to hire him. And we’ve gone a lot of places and met a lot of fine people and it’s just been a bunch of adventures.
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So when we spoke on the phone I had mentioned some names of people who are in the business. You knew a lot of those people. How would you describe that—the community of fishermen and people in this business?
The fishing industry on a whole I really believe is a brotherhood. There’s a lot of different things to the fishing business as far as races, cultures, things like that and it is pretty competition. You know, there’s a lot of competition to it, but overall there’s— there’s been a lot of different things bring animosity between different groups and things like that. And there’s a real close-knit group that I particularly hang, that we trawl together. But if it’s come down to where somebody needs some help or is in dire need or needs, it affects all of us; I mean we’re all out there doing the same thing. When it comes down to helping somebody I really believe it don’t matter who you are. You’re going to get help.
Has that sense changed over time given now that it seems that there are fewer people on the water?
If anything it’s really helped, because there are fewer of us out there, and as they say conquer and divide, you know? If we don’t stand together then none of us is going to be doing it, and that’s really helped out as far as getting people to participate more. I’m the President of our local fishing organization—10 years ago if you could get three or four guys that could stick together you was doing something great. Now there’s so many organizations out there; we have an organization where the eight coastal states of shrimpers all have one voice now, and it’s not just local. It’s nationwide. And then now there’s another organization that come out in the last four—five years called the Commercial Fishermen of America and it’s everybody who makes their living on the water from Alaska all the way around to Maine, so that’s really helped a lot, as far as politics and things like that, you know, [fishery] management.
The organization was started to get a closer relationship between the people who manage our business— manage our industry and make new rules and regulations. We’re reaching out and do different things like donating shrimp for local charities and raffles and things—to just try to get the word out to people. If we get the public to be on our side well that’s even better, instead of the image of a dirty old hairy fisherman with no teeth and just a nuisance, always drunk and things like this. But we try to give the public a different view of what they see fishermen are.
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The one thing that I try to tell everybody is don’t believe everything you read as far as like environmental things. Bottom trawlers are not as bad as what a lot of people say. They send all this propaganda out, like the Save the Oceans Campaign. They sent this thing that showed this beautiful coral reef in one picture and then in the next picture it showed this big mud flat that was underwater and that was supposedly after a shrimp boat had come through there and drug his nets across these coral reefs, that they completely decimated this coral reef to where it was just nothing but a mud bottom. That is so not true; first of all we won't want to drag our nets on something that would tear them up. [Laughs] We haven’t invented a net yet that could destroy a coral reef. I mean it’s string, you know? But there’s a bad reputation, and it’s because of all these environmental groups and things like that. And there’s a lot more issues with the environment than the commercial fishing aspect. Over-fishing might be a problem but we don’t want to really over-fish. But that’s the easiest thing that they can stop first is commercial fishermen because we’re all independent; we’re not a real close-knit band of people. So if you can get rid of them first, well yeah that is one slice of the pie to the problems with the oceans and seas and stuff like that. So before you join a conservation group or something like that, make sure it’s a good—I mean of course it’s going to be good because at least they are trying to help, but they’re putting a lot of honest hard-working people out of business that has no —. Like in South Louisiana, the marshes and things are deteriorating every day. They’re losing hundreds of acres a day to habitat to Coastal degradation. It’s just eroding away to nothing. Well, why not focus your efforts on that? “Well let’s attack the commercial fishing industry because that’s going to be the easiest?” We need to work together and that’s the one thing I’d really like to stress.
And another thing is you need to support local. Buy American whether it’s shrimp or just—we need to help ourselves because a lot of these foreign imports of everything— the shrimp business was probably the last one to feel the economic pressures of foreign trade. It didn’t happen here until four or five years ago, the effects of foreign trade. But we really need to help America and buy American products whenever we possibly can.
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But what about all the challenges you talk about? A lot of the people that I’ve talked to have been very pessimistic about this industry. What do you think about the future of this industry here?
Yeah; that’s the whole attitude. I mean, I could have a few years ago got out of the business and done something else but it’s just hard to be pessimistic when you’re doing something you love. And yeah, you’re not making as much money as what you used to or as much money as your grandfather made back in the heyday, but no matter what it is, as long as you’re doing what you love and you’re paying the bills and you’re floating by, I’m a firm believer in positive things happen to positive people. And you won't ever hear me say anything negative about the fishing business, never-ever. I mean it’s—it’s got its negative aspects to it but you have to stay positive. You don’t go to a football game with a, “Well we’re going to lose today.” [Laughs] You can't be that way in this business. You got to stay positive. Just a bad day shrimping is better than a good day working.
It’s really telling that you keep referring to shrimping and work as being separate. Obviously, you really love it. You’re also a young man. It’s tough physical work; how long do you think realistically you’re going to be able to do this, just in terms of body wear and tear?
I don’t know. I have to go back to my Uncle Elie. He was 70 years old and I was 18 years old as his deckhand and that’s what I always asked him. I said, “Uncle Elie, you shrimped when it was good; you ought to be kicked back in your recliner.” He said, “Son, I’m going to stop shrimping when I can't pick my leg up over the rail to get on the boat.” And believe it or not he pretty well did; he worked until he was 78 years old and he got sick and it was really the doctor’s fault. They gave him a bunch of medication that messed him up and he couldn’t have no equilibrium and he was taking all kinds of medication that was just really messing with him. He couldn’t lift his leg up over the rail no more so he sold his boat and retired, but about two—three years later he got straightened out and he bought another boat. So this is something I want to do until I die; I’m going to stay on that boat until I can't lift my leg over the rail. And if it’s something my kids want to get into and they have the hustle and the drive and the motivation to do it, then I’m going to back them 100-percent. I’m going to teach them everything I know about it if they want to be it. But I’m not going to push them to do it, because I really don’t think if you don’t have a love for the business you’re not going to make it.
A lot of people I talked to have said they didn’t really want their kids to be in the business, People were proud of the work they did, but also felt it was a little bit of a stepping stone — as soon as they made enough money to send their kids into other professions they really encouraged that. It’s just something I’ve heard a lot and I think your perspective on that has been very different.
Biloxi has been a melting pot, and if you look back 100 years ago a lot of the family names, there were a lot of Polish and French, Hungarian, a lot of Europeans. They worked really hard. They struggled to educate their kids, give them better jobs and they became the doctors and lawyers and the business owners of the community. Just in the past 25 years with the last immigrants that come here, which was the Vietnamese, they worked really hard. They made good money; they sent their kids to college. They got better educations and now you see a lot of the Vietnamese in this community here, they are business owners. It’s just a big cycle and it keeps repeating itself. It was always for people with no education, people that couldn’t speak English, they could get in the fishing business, you know? They could be their own boss and how much they made determined by how hard they work. That’s the same way I feel about with my kids; if they want to go to college, hey I’m going to support them 100-percent but if they want to stay in the fishing business then let’s do it.
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10 years ago, if you asked me if we was going around and looking at boats and I said, “Well you see that guy right there? He catches shrimp. He can catch it. You see that guy? He don’t catch a whole lot of shrimp. You see that guy; that guy right there catches a lot of shrimp.” Well now, I mean I don’t mean to be blowing my own horn or nothing but I feel like if somebody was 20 years old looking at me and they seen me—“Hey, that guy right there, he catches a lot of shrimp. He’s good at his game.” And that’s how I feel about myself. And I guess that’s just some pride I take into it is that I’m successful enough at catching the shrimp to remain in the business. It’s not like oystering or crabbing. The oysters don’t move; they stay there. The crabs, they’re a little bit more lucid but shrimp, they’re a totally different animal. You always have your aces and then you have your jokers and I really feel like I’m one of the aces in the business.
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