Page 94 - South Mississippi Living - July, 2016

SPORTS & OUTDOORS working the sound
GOODTO BE
KING
Before he became this year’s Shrimp King, Frank Parker was a boy looking down Biloxi’s Oak Street every day and dreaming. He could see the Mavar packing plant across Highway 90. Passing the edges of Howard Avenue, he could see the ruddy color of the sound and the boats
shimmering and swaying in the tide. The scent of thousands of tons of shrimp peeled and shipped would roar over him in the summer breeze from out over Dog Key’s Pass and any adult nearby would comment that was what money smelled like. Such views cast the fate for Capt. Frank Parker
“I’ve always wanted it. Ever since I was a little kid,” Parker said. “Growing up on the point, you look south, east and north on Back Bay and you see boats. It’s hard not to want to be a fisherman.”
At 43, Capt. Parker is one of the youngest shrimpers to be named King of the Blessing of the Fleet. While some may speak of his age, none will besmirch his lineage. From a family who has lived on the Point for seven generations, he has a bloodline steeped with history and heritage.
Parker was a sophomore at Biloxi High School when he started running his own crab trap lines before and after school. By graduation, he was making the summer shrimp opening on the Junie Doffie and dredging her in the Pass come winter. At age 24 he bought his first lugger and went from deckhand to captain surrounded by friends and peers who were still struggling to decide what they wanted to do
for a living.
As a commercial fisherman, Parker has survived the
hardships that come with the industry — hurricanes, sinking, heading out and heading home, and the endless politics of ever-dwindling prices and who caught more. From torn nets to broken teeth, Parker has done more than simply endure and survive — he has flourished.
When working the sound with net and drudge, Parker connected with his grandfather’s legacy and in 1994 started work as crew and later captain of the Biloxi Schooners Mike Sekul and Glenn L. Swetman. For the first time in 60 years, a member of his family was, again, steering the white-winged queens under sail on the waters of the Mississippi Coast. While showing children, tourists and others the wonders
of the age of commercial shrimping under sail, Parker connected generations to what started it all and made Biloxi the Seafood Capitol of the world.
Between seasons, Parker worked with the Gulf Coast Research Lab to study the cycles of the Gulf of Mexico and helped unlock vast resources and studies that furthered conservation and fishery improvement. His most recent work with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) helped test experimental versions of the Turtle and Fish Excluder Devices pulled in the nets — giving real-time operational experience to testing that simply cannot be modeled in a laboratory.
“My family was always pushing me to go to school,” Parker
94 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • July 2016
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