Oscar Sanzin
Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster Oral History
NOAA's Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster Oral History documents the experience of people living in Gulf of Mexico oil-spill-affected fishing communities. The oral history data complements other social and economic data about the spill collected by NOAA and other governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations.
Stephanie Scull-DeArmey
Linda VanZandt
Mr. Oscar Sanzin was born October 15, 1925, in Yugoslavia. When he was thirteen years old, the Nazis overran his hometown in Yugoslavia, destroying the town and killing its occupants. Sanzin escaped and served in the Resistance. He was later a prisoner of war in Germany, and he was taken to Africa in the hold of a ship as a slave laborer. He was liberated by the Americans, and he immigrated to the United States where he became a commercial fishermen on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. On June 22, 1950, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, he married Helen Martin (born July 12, 1930). They have four children, Michael, James, David, and Cynthia. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Sanzin was forced to retire from commercial fishing after sustaining a back injury while he was clearing downed trees.
Scope and Content Note:
He talks about commercial fishing/shrimping on the Mississippi Gulf Coast from 1950 through 2005; shrimping; cat-food processing plants; crabbing; ice on boats; seafood-processing factories; bad weather; building, fitting, maintaining boats; species of sea life caught; overfishing; nets; Hurricane Katrina, 2005; technologies; oystering; factory housing; escalating fuel prices; imported, farm-raised shrimp; regulation of fisheries; TEDs; weather; changes in wetlands; mutuality and reciprocity in fishing community; weather; crabbing; BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster; Yugoslavia, circa WWII; family.
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