Coastal Erosion

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 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,” 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 view—they envisioned the state’s coastal waters as a resort and their rallying cry was “Ban the Nets!”

The Gulf Wars Series: Early in the 1990s, a few “nonpartisan” philanthropies bankrolled a media campaign that smeared commercial fishing. Recreational interests added to the rhetorical carpet bombing and attacked seafood producers around the country.
On the Gulf of Mexico, a 1994 ballot initiative in Florida convinced voters to take commercial harvesters’ gillnets and trammel nets. Sportsmen in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were soon pursuing bans in their states. The battles raged through 1995 and beyond.
Books in the Gulf Wars Series document this challenging time when facts and reason were brushed aside by a movement that was driven by emotion and the consumption of virtually everything but fish.