William C. Stewart is a commercial shrimper on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  He was born on February 11, 1963, at Gulfport Memorial Hospital, Harrison County, Mississippi, to Mr. William Stewart (born in 1933, in Woolmarket, Mississippi) and Mrs. Barbara B. Stewart (born in 1940, in New Orleans, Louisiana). His father was an attorney and a judge in Gulfport, Mississippi. His father’s family were schooner captains, loggers, and shrimpers. His mother was a homemaker, who worked as William Colmer’s secretary and as a medical administrator. His mother’s father was in the shipping business. Stewart is the oldest of three children. Stewart attended East Ward Elementary School, Gulfport High School, and St. Stanislaus College. In 1987, he earned his BS in English from The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He worked as a commercial salvage diver in the Gulf of Mexico. He has fished commercially from an early age in shrimp trawling, crab fishing, and commercial gillnet finfishing. He had a sixty-two-foot trawl boat the Gulf Prince, a forty-two-foot trawl boat, the Naomi Charles, and several smaller gillnet skiffs. He also works at salvage wrecking, Bob Cat work, welding, bucket truck work, dozer/trackhoe work, slab removal, land clearing, and tree work.

Scope and Content Note:
He talks about sport fishing, species caught, boats, commercial fishing, regulations, equipment, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, Port of Gulfport, prices for catches, rising fuel costs, gillnets, fish migrations, haul seines, sustainability, bycatch, conservation, hook-and-line fishing, sea turtles, set-netting, drift-netting, casinos, seafood-processing plants, monofilament, cotton gillnets, pressures against commercial fishing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, shrimping, ice boats, freezer boats, BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, closing of waters as oil comes in, loss of income from oil in waters, currents in underwater gullies, dredging, barrier islands, Vessels of Opportunity, marketing/retailing catch, Gulfport?s port commission, Pass Christian Harbor, Bonnet Carré Spillway freshwater encroachment of Mississippi Sound, Pearl River pollution, Mississippi Gulf Coast pollution, protein from marine life, crabbing, reallocation of finfish resources, Bosarge skiffs.