Page 42 - South Mississippi Living - May, 2025

A myriad of reasons draw people to the Gulf Coast year
after year, including miles of breathtaking shorelines, dazzling holiday celebrations, unparalleled museums, and rows of casino excitement. But the top reason visitors surge one of the Coast’s quaint beach cities is usually the scrumptious seafood.
And locals who have been out to dinner at one of the many coastal seafood restaurants or visited their hometown seafood market for a backyard seafood boil or fish fry have probably noticed Gulf shrimp, blue crab, speckled trout, redfish, flounder, and oyster prices are, once again, on the rise.
“I have to constantly explain to people why an order of crab claws is $25,” said Thomas Genin, chef-owner of The Blind Tiger restaurants as well as the brand’s seafood market.
Genin, a Gulf Coast native, explained the days of a shrimper or fisherman selling his catch at the docks and turning a profit appear to be gone. Large companies that nationally streamline seafood have flooded the Coast. Once here, they buy out smaller hometown businesses and leave very little seafood for local markets and restaurants.
“These companies buy everything that hits the dock here on the Coast,” he continued. “They are willing to pay more and a day later, it's in Atlanta. A day after, it’s at JFK Airport in New
York City. A day after that, it's wherever the demand and the best price is. I used to be able to buy all the speckled trout I wanted for $2.25 a pound. Now, it's $15 or more a pound, and the reason is the big seafood players. If I'm paying $15 a pound for speckled trout or $13 a pound for redfish, that's no longer a $10 fish sandwich.”
However, large companies snagging Mississippi seafood and then shipping it all across the country is not the only challenge facing the Coast’s seafood industry. Adding to the frustration are the several Bonnet Carré spillway openings that have repeatedly shaken the water quality in the Mississippi Sound to the point where species died or had to evade the Coast. Another challenge was the disruption caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which killed 8.3 billion oysters in the Gulf of America and left Mississippi’s reefs still struggling to produce in 2025.
“It’s really become a double-edged sword,” he said. “It’s hard to go out and catch anything but there have been huge advances in aqua farming and that's really where everything's headed.”
Genin added simplifying the strict regulations that tie the hands of local shrimpers and fishermen could help boost the Mississippi seafood industry. “It would help fishermen to be allowed to sell directly to people like me,” he said.
42 | May 2025
www.smliving.net | SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living
story by
Cherie Ward