Mr. Walter Eley Ross Sr. is a retired commercial fisherman on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  He was born on March 16, 1924, in Biloxi, Mississippi,to Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Ross. His father was a commercial fisherman, house builder, and boat builder. His mother was a housewife. Mr. Ross began fishing with his father commercially when he was a teenager, and he continued in that profession for fifty-three years. Ross also served in the US Air Force, achieving the rank of sergeant. He is a Catholic. He and his wife, the late Yvonne Seymour Ross, had five children, Walter Eley Ross Jr., Sandra Lea Ross, Karen Yvonne Ross, Kim Michelle Ross, and Janelle Marie Ross.

Scope and Content Note:
He talks about commercial fishing, multi-generational fishing family, sailing schooner circa late 1800s, oystering in Pass Christian, Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina, marketing catch, boats, Blessing of the Fleet, St. Michaels Catholic Church, Biloxi seafood factories, contested oyster reefs between Mississippi and Louisiana, regulations, Hurricane of 1947, changes in equipment for shrimping, equipment in oyster factories, mouth of Mississippi River, Head of Passes, Southwest Pass, Pass A Loutre, South Pass, mud lumps, depth sounder, buoys, freight boats working for factories, shrimp nets, surviving sinking of boat, races, shrimping, protecting boats in hurricanes, Hurricane Camille, BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, BP claims.