William Baldwin is a poet and retired shrimper who grew up in McClellanville, South Carolina, a town known for its shrimping docks and rich fishing traditions.  His grandfather Rut Leland was a boat captain.  As a teenager William worked the fuel docks, and by the age of twenty-one, he was running the shrimp dock.  He attended college and finished a master’s thesis on the Dada artists before returning to McClellanville to work on various shrimp boats.  Though he stopped shrimping years ago, William continues to draw from the experiences of the docks and open water and th

Oringinally from Atlanta, Wes Birdsong and his wife sailed into Apalachicola in 1996. They docked their boat in town at the Deep Water Marina & Boatyard. It soon it became obvious to Wes that the marina needed some attention, so he took it upon himself to become caretaker of the place and help service the boats. Deep Water Marina, once the only working boatyard in the area, serviced all of the commercial fishing boats in Apalachicola. It was also a place for recreational boats to dry dock for repairs. In 2006 the Deep Water Marina & Boatyard closed.

Born in 1961, Tommy Ward grew up with an appreciation for the place he still calls home. His parents, Buddy and Martha Pearl Ward, raised Tommy in the business out at their seafood house, 13 Mile. The remote location, thirteen miles west of Apalachicola, gave Tommy a hands-on education in his natural surroundings and life on the bay. As a teenager, Tommy left home and spent some time away at college. He also paid his dues working at some other seafood houses in Apalachicola. Eventually, he returned to the family business. But 13 Mile is not just his business. It's his heritage.

Terry Dean's grandmother, Monette Hicks, came to Eastpoint with her parents in 1916. Terry grew up listening to her grandmother's stories of what Eastpoint was like in the early days, when oysters were shucked in lean-tos on the shore, and there wasn't a thing on St. George Island, not even a bridge to get there. Electricity didn't arrive in Eastpoint until the 1950s. Still, dozens of seafood houses dotted the waterfront. In every family there was an oysterman, a shucker, or a crab picker, probably all three. Today, only a handful of seafood houses line the water's edge through Eastpoint.

Rocky Magwood, a Fourth generation fisherman, says he was raised on a shrimp boat. He’d head out with his father, Clarence “Skipper” Magwood, before he could even walk. His grandfather Junior Magwood built a rich shrimping empire on the docks of Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant. Rocky followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps, working as a captain of several shrimping boats, each one painted green, orange, and white – the signature look of the Magwood fleet. For years shrimp caught on the Magwood fleet was delivered and sold at Shem Creek at C. A. Magwood & Sons.

Bobby Shiver was born at 13 Mile in 1939. His father oystered and his mother shucked for Miller's Fish & Oyster Company. As a child, Bobby remembers building toy boats out of scrap metal and wood. In the 1960s he began to build boats as a hobby. For years, creating boats was an avocation. Working the bay and building houses was Bobby's vocation. But when he got older, he began learning more about the trade from local boat builders. With a seventh-grade education, Bobby mastered the craft and made hundreds of boats. He never worked from a design.

Neal Cooksey grew up on James Island in Charleston, South Carolina. As a teenager, he started scalloping in Charleston Harbor and Savannah, Georgia. When he saw his first paycheck, he decided to stick with it. In the mid-1970s, he took off for shrimping the Texas Gulf Coast and Key West, Florida. Along with his crew of Bubba Jameson and Calvin Chavis, Neal shrimps on the Haley Marie & Sons, named after his three children. The boat always returns to the docks of Crosby’s Fish & Shrimp co-owned by his wife, Joanie.

Nathaniel "Danny" Manigault was born and raised in Charleston. In high school he moved to the Union Heights neighborhood of North Charleston. He worked as a mechanic at R & M Industrial Products, and fished whiting, croaker, spots, and sharks as a hobby. When his neighbor told him how he could make a little money on the side crabbing, Danny decided to start crabbing to supplement his full-time job. Now retired from R & M, Danny usually hits the Wando River by four each morning to make it back in time to delivery blue crabs to customers in North Charleston.

Monica Lemieux comes from a family of fishermen. Her grandfather, her father, and her brothers all earned their living on the bay. Her father, Bill Martina, is believed to have commissioned one of the first shrimp boats in the area. He named it the Irish Town after a neighborhood in Apalachicola, and the boat still hauls shrimp today. Monica's brother, Kevin, is its captain. Monica did not work in the seafood industry until she was an adult. She went to college and got a job outside of the industry. But when the company she worked for closed, she, too, looked to the bay for work.

Born in 1916, Monette Hicks grew up in Eastpoint. In those days, boats didn't have motors, there weren't any bridges over the bay, and there were no houses on St. George Island. Seafood was all anyone knew. Monette's family worked the bay harvesting oysters. She quit school at the age of twelve, when she was big enough to shuck. Oystermen harvested their catch nearby on Cat Point and Porters Bar. Shuckers would work daylight to dark, without electricity. In 1933, at the age of sixteen, Monette married a shrimper, Louis Hullman Hicks.