Mr. Thang "Peter" Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American, former shrimper, now community liaison for Mississippi State University Coastal Research and Extension Center.  He was born in 1967 in Vung Tau, South Vietnam. His parents were fisherfolk and told him the story of escaping Vietnam in the family boat two weeks before the Communists took over South Vietnam, when Mr. Nguyen was just eight years old. They were intercepted by an American ship and stayed briefly in Guam before being sponsored by the Catholic Church first to Minnesota, then to Oklahoma, Texas, and finally to New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1979, Mr. Nguyen’s uncle, Mau Nguyen, and extended family were recruited by the Gollott Seafood Company to work in the processing industry in Biloxi, Mississippi. After one year, they moved to Biloxi where Mr. Nguyen has spent most of his life. He attended Biloxi High School but made shrimping his full-time occupation beginning at age eighteen when he became captain of his father’s boat. In 2000 Mr. Nguyen purchased his own boat. After losing his boat in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Nguyen worked with the Biloxi office of National Alliance for Vietnamese American Service Agencies (NAVASA), then began work as a liaison to the Vietnamese fishing community through his position as Fisheries Technologist at the Mississippi State University Coastal Research and Extension Center in Biloxi. He is married and has four children.

Scope and Content Note:
He discusses being raised in Vung Tau, Vietnam, until escape at age 8 and journey to Guam; sponsorship by Catholic Church to Minnesota; long fishing tradition in family; uncle?s role in establishing family in New Orleans and Biloxi communities; first Vietnamese family brought to Biloxi from New Orleans by Richard Gollott; working for Gollott?s Seafood Company; Vietnamese strong work ethic; building boats; shucking oysters; deckhands learning to shrimp; infrastructure for shrimpers; quitting school to help parents shrimp; US citizenship needed to run boats; making a good living fishing; marketing the catch; Hurricane Katrina, coping, and challenges in the aftermath; boat repossessed after Katrina; fishing regulations; turtle excluder devices; working for MSU Coastal Research and Extension Center as liaison to Vietnamese fishing community; best experiences shrimping; BP oil spill impact; closing of waters; Vessels of Opportunity program; good and bad cycles of shrimping; imported shrimp and fuel costs; assessment of industry future; new technology for shrimping being tested; multigenerational fishing family ending with him; characteristics of successful fishermen; reciprocity in Vietnamese fishing community; meaning of being American; safety training for Vietnamese fishermen; language issues regarding lost-income claims against BP; Mississippi River flood and freshwater intrusion.