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Biloxi's Ethnic Shrimping Comunities – Home
INTERVIEWS
Corky Hire
Andrew “Fo-Fo” Gilich
Frank Parker
Georgo Trojanovich
Leroy Duvall
Peter Nguyen
Richard Gollott
Sammy Montiforte
Sue Nguyen
Todd Rosetti
Interviews and photographs by Francis Lam.
Underwriting for this project provided by Louisiana Foods: Global Seafood Source of Houston, Texas.
NAVASA
189 Lameuse Street
Biloxi, MS 39530
www.navasa.org
And we worked for many years until I have family of my own and I have my own boat and everything. I got a very big boat and spent a lot of money on that. And then Katrina start coming in and we can't handle the mortgage no more. – Peter Nguyen
When Peter Nguyen’s family arrived in Biloxi from Vietnam, with stints in four other states, it was almost as if they came home. They had relatives who were already here, working in seafood, and despite the tensions back then between Vietnamese and White fishermen, there was a small and growing community of Vietnamese fishermen drawn by the availability of work that was familiar to them.
Peter went to school and helped his father on the boat, until he turned 18 and quit his schooling to help full time. For years, the family did well enough for Peter to support his own family. He took out loans and bought his own boat, a massive one, equipped for 6-week trips away from the family he was working to support. He started having reservations, but whatever choices he might have made, Katrina and the tightening economics of the domestic shrimp trade chose for him. Peter sold his boat and works now assisting other fishermen, translating for them, researching better technologies and methods for their businesses, but even as he sees certain fishermen surviving, he doesn’t see their children following them in the industry. “It’s kind of late to start now,” he admits.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Peter Nguyen, Outreach Coordinator
Date: August 22, 2008
Location: National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies, Biloxi, MS
Interviewer & Photographer: Francis Lam
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Francis Lam: This is Francis Lam for the Southern Foodways Alliance. Today is Friday, August 22, 2008. I’m with Peter Nguyen at the Hope Coordination Center in Biloxi, Mississippi, and we’re going to be talking about his days shrimping the Gulf and his experience growing up here in the Vietnamese shrimping community. Would you please state your name, age, and occupation for the record?
Peter Nguyen: My name is Peter Nguyen and I work with the NAVASA, National American Vietnamese—yeah Vietnamese American Alliance. [National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies] And I do research with the local fishermen and get some data—information about how the fishermen life in the Coast. I’m 40 years old.
Where were you born, Peter?
I was born in Phuong Chou, Vietnam. We came to the United States back in 1975. My family got sponsored by the Catholic in Minnesota, Minneapolis, and we lived there about a couple of months, and then we moved on to Oklahoma, and then Texas, and Louisiana and then we came to Mississippi—Biloxi, Mississippi, back in 1980.
Why did you come to Biloxi?
Well before, we— my parents, they don’t know what to do with their occupation. They don’t speak English and they heard a rumor that Mississippi, they have like shucking oysters and doing the shrimping business. They can earn money to support us. And they have in Mississippi and Louisiana a lot of Asian and Vietnamese people that are shucking oysters and trying to be—for the women it’s shucking oysters and for the men it’s trying to get a fisherman’s life. My parents and my uncle and brother and sisters; they were all fishermen in Vietnam already. That’s the only thing they know how to do. When I growed up, I taken over my father’s footsteps and follow him and be a fisherman, too. And I’ve been a fisherman over 15 years now. Right now my father, he’s retired and I just been out of the fishing, shrimping business just after Katrina, after the storm about three and a half years now.
Do you remember arriving in Biloxi; do you remember your first impressions?
Well, I was still in school at that time. I was about—I think I was only about 12—13 years old. I got up to about middle school and ninth grade. After that, my dad, he’s a fisherman at that time and he needed my support. And I need to help him how to operate a fishing vessel—shrimping. You have to be an American citizen. He don’t have American citizen [citizenship], so I have to drop out of school - at that time I was 18 – to get American citizen and to operate a shrimp boat. So since that I’ve been helping him and working with him and being a shrimper all my life.
My family needed me. They don’t speak English very well and I have no other choice beside helping my family. And I got two sisters and a brother, just trying to help the family out on running the business to support the family. After the storm, my dad, he’s retired. We got a lot of things destroyed by the hurricane and impact that we can't imagine, and it’s making us feel very, very sad. We all started from the bottom and we get—got to the top where we wanted and Katrina just take everything away from us and we are trying to survive now. [Laughs.]
I started with the new job, outreach for the Mississippi State University Extension trying to help with the fishermen and doing research. Help them out, whatever they need, like translation and like, help them with their documentation or regulation from the government. Whatever they don’t understand and what’s coming down to them and help them to prepare them for the future.
Are these fishermen typically ones you knew personally from the community or from working?
No. We have 300 fishermen in the local shrimping, from Gulfport, Pass Christian and Bayou La Batre and Long Beach all the way. I do research, almost 100 fishermen in a month.
You mentioned you had uncles and cousins still in the industry. Were there here when your family first got here and got involved in shrimping?
No; they came after that, back in the ‘90s. Then, a lot of Vietnamese know about shrimp and business and then they come from everywhere. They come from California, Florida, and Louisiana, Texas, and started out here.
But they are starting like getting out of the business and doing something else. They still live here but they want to do some other business besides shrimping now, like opening a gas station store or grocery or dry-clean or nail salon or something like that.
When you arrived were there very many Vietnamese people? Did you arrive and live in the Vietnamese community?
Well my uncle, he was live here before. We were living in New Orleans and he know that seafood industry here because he have a good friend, Mr. Richard Gollott. He’s a seafood processor here; at that time he was the oyster processor. Now he’s learned the shrimp processing. And he know him; he’s a good friend of my uncle, and take care of the Vietnamese community. Showed them and guide them the way how to earn money. At that time they’re just shucking oysters and a man started out as a deckhand for shrimping. And the more we get into it and get experience, then we build up our community. My uncle started calling every friend and relative close—to come down here and we all started right behind him and setting up and we start moving up, you know?
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Still now my friend and relatives, they unload with primarily Richard Gollott. Very, very good man, he’s just like a father to me and my uncle and a very good man. He helped bring up the Vietnamese community in Biloxi. Everybody knows him and comes to him that—those years because he worked so well with the Vietnamese, he understand us and the feeling and thought. And he help us out through any kind of problem we had. Because he need us and we need him to stay together and build up together with the fishing way of life here. We’re still unloading shrimp off of his dock and that’s where we sell our catch.
And so what were some of the jobs that you’ve had in shrimping?
I started as a deckhand until I became 18 and I get my citizenship. I became a captain and I know how to operate the boat with my dad, like helping him out and navigating and stuff like that. And we worked for many years until I have family of my own and I have my own boat and everything. And not too long, I have a very nice boat and saved up all the money for that. I got a very big boat and spent a lot of money on that. And then Katrina start coming in and we can't handle the mortgage no more. And right now, the price of the fuel is just so high, I don’t think I can make this payment. We can't—not handle that right now. [Laughs]
I’ve got a 95-foot steel hull with a 720 horsepower on that, and my mortgage is so high that I can't keep up with it. I have to pay about $10,000 a month. From 2000 to 2004 it’s okay. If you make around $60,000—$70,000 or $80,000, you can barely pay the money and all the expenses and your deckhand and your crew and everything. You probably have a couple thousand left for the home mortgage, food and expenses for your family. And because insurance and the mortgage is so high, and I don’t think I can make it through that way. That why I give it up and I—nothing I can do about it. If I’m a couple months behind on the payment, then they just come down and take it away from me, everything I own. [Laughs] Well, now I still in debt and it’s a very sad feeling and every time I think about it, you know, it’s really hurting me and I— I just hope I can get it out of my mind but really a tragedy after the storm. A lot of people got affected and hurt by that.
In Mississippi we’ve got three types of boats. We’ve got a boat like mine; it’s a freezer boat, and we can stay out four to six weeks out in the sea until our fuels and our food supply, our water is ran out. If nothing like storming or hurricane, we can stay out there and we can shrimp right along the Gulf Coast from Mississippi all the way down to Texas. But the ice boat they can only stay around two weeks because the ice boat has to come in and sell their catch before the shrimp get bad. But on the freezer boat you can freeze it up as long as you want. And little skimmer boats working the Back Bay; they can only stay out there about three or four days and they come in because they’re working right off the beach.
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Did you enjoy this work?
Before yes; [Laughs] but now thinking about, I don’t think I don’t want—. Before, our economy was very good and everything was going great and smooth and nothing so bad. Now everything is changed so much. Fuel prices are sky high. I miss it a lot but I don’t know if I ever want to come back in the shrimping business anymore. It’s very hard work and you have to focus, you have to stay away from home and you kind of miss the family. And when you get in you don’t get to stay pretty long. Got to see everyone, three or four days, and you had to go back out again.
No, I don’t think I ever want to do it [again] because it’s very tough work. It’s take over halfway of my life and it got me going nowhere. I’m still the same, you know? And I just want new life now—change the whole thing around because I’ve been there—spend so many times in the shrimp business and I got nothing out of it, you know? I built it up. I start it up. And when I came to realize I had something, the world—the whole world is changing around me now. And I’ve been through that and I don’t think I want to be a fisherman or shrimper anymore. I know a lot of fishermen, they’re out there and hanging onto it and I know if they can sell their boat with a good deal or a good price, I think they want out of the business, too.
They have the same feeling. I’ve been running into them now—even if they’re doing good and everything, they just got tired of it. It’s hard work and—and it’s very kind of lonely life out there. [Laughs]
But you had also mentioned that part of you misses being on the water; part of you misses the work. What do you miss about it?
Well the good thing is I miss the seafood, the fresh fish and fresh shrimp you eat. You catch them while they’re still alive and you cook them right away and you eat it. And all these nice things—all kinds of fish you catch and all kinds of shrimp and all this—there’s a lot of species. You can watch the sun rise and get to navigate the boat and working through the weather. Communicate with other fishermen and how you see things different from the inside world, compared to the land job. Everything is very different. You’re in the water and you see something you’ve never seen before. Interesting every day, you know? The best part is see the sunrise in the morning. [Laughs]
Did you grow up eating a lot of seafood? You said your family were always fishermen.
Yeah; the majority, we eat a lot of fresh. I mean even not too many frozen, fresh catch like ice, but when you’re out there you eat everything is fresh, live. Of course, when shrimp is fresh it kind of tastes a lot different and very juicy and because it’s live, it’s got to taste better than when you put it on ice or something. And crab, fish, all kind of stuff that you can name it; whatever you want—whatever you want to eat—. [Laughs]
I cook. When I was the captain I always cooked for my deckhands and they love it. That’s why they say I’m good cooker and I cook at home and I love to cook. Sometimes we’d get a good fish, like flounder or redfish or some—lot of nice fish out there you got. And we usually cook it in our Asian traditional way. We fry and we bake them and we do rice paste rolling, like with the shrimp we can do spring rolls.
We call in the Vietnamese dish - we use it with white rice - canh chua [sour and spicy soup] — or ca kho to [fish stew]. Or on the shrimp, we call it cuon banh trang [rice paper rolls] and tom kho [shrimp stew], tom rang [shrimp tomato stirfry]. And sometimes we crawfish style—crawfish style flavor like in the South here, how they boil crawfish. We use that recipe—I use that recipe to boil shrimp and boil crab. Oh, it tastes delicious, awesome and I’m good at that too. I love crawfish and I got that flavor and I cook them, same thing. It’s only a different species, but you can represent shrimp and then crab and then crawfish, beside crawfish, you know? And yeah, I think my crawfish style is very good. I have never had a friend that—no, [Laughs] “Well where did you get this recipe?” I made that recipe and they enjoy it. And some of them, they don’t believe me or my friend when they eat it and they tried it and they said, “This guy is very good at crawfish boil—shrimp boil; you should try it. It’s the best in the Coast.” I don’t have no restaurant but — [Laughs] and they don’t believe it, so next time I saw them, I boiled for them, and the word get out. [Laughs]
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I’d heard that when the Vietnamese people started to get shrimp boats, they had a technique that someone referred to as chopsticks. Can you explain that?
Well you could see what we call a chopstick, like your light pole. They use two of those about 40-foot long for each and they put it on top of the boat. They put down in the water in the front of the boat. And they stick down in the water and all they do is they just pushing the net. They only can shrimp in very shallow water. I think about 10—15-foot, less, because the light pole is not very long. And your propeller and everything, they won't disturb the shrimp, because the net and everything is so quiet and smooth. That’s why they catch good and don’t make noise—different. But catch good and very easy, very lightweight and they only can work on calm weather. You pick it up every 30—40 minutes and your catch is very fresh all the time. Everything is live, you know? And it don’t cost much. That’s how they do it back in Vietnam, and then they—it just put that in their memory, and come over and see them trying it, and they work for a couple months and said what is this guy doing? [Laughs] Before, people used that. Now it’s illegal; they don’t let them do that no more.
But on my side of the family, my brother, my uncle, my relatives—none of them had used this. It’s like what you call a different Vietnamese—from the North and the South?
So Vietnamese people from the Northern part of Vietnam would use a different technique to fish than the South?
Yeah; they’d use chopsticks, and in the South we used the boat and we’d trawl because we got beaches in there. In the North we’ve got just pond-raised or something like or—that’s how we used it; it’s different because they don’t go deepwater.
We used the door and trawl. We learned it from the American technique. We don’t know how the shrimp business is and how to operate a boat or how to work on the door. But in our country, my dad, when he was a fisherman in Vietnam, my brother and uncle—It’s different. When I growing up, I listen to them in how they worked and asked them about the history of how they only catch fish. Two boats only dragging one trawl, one net, very large, like 100 or some 200-foot of trawl and go along or beside each other. When you’re ready to pick up, you had to let this boat know that, so he dropped everything and this boat can pick up the trawl by himself. And the next dragging I’m going to let you do it, so then like two boats operating one trawl. And that’s—that’s why the net is so big but they only catch fish and not too much is shrimp.
Do you remember what the relationship was like between the Vietnamese and white shrimpers as you were growing up in this industry?
Before, we have problems. We have kind of a lot of prejudice things. We’ve run into people that don’t like us, and making fun of us. And sometimes if we did better and they get jealous. But as life goes on, things start getting better and we are very—have no problems with that these days. And it depends on where—not too much in Mississippi, but a lot of—I notice it in Houma, in Louisiana, that’s a very heavy like prejudice before, those days.
Why did that change or how did that change?
Because the Vietnamese the population has expanded; a lot of Americans out of business for a long time and Vietnamese taking over the shrimp business. And they’re everywhere. Right now, the majority is Vietnamese shrimpers—more than American now because that’s the only thing they can do.
After the storm made things too difficult, your choice was to leave that industry. In the work you do now, you talk to a lot of fishermen who are saying, “If I could leave I would.” And certainly the cost of fuel rising, and the price of shrimp dropping, it’s becoming harder and harder for people to make a living doing this. What do you think is going to happen in the future for this industry?
If the shrimp price keeps dropping, or the fuel price keep come up, I don’t think what the fishermen do. I think they’ll just try to see if they can sell their boat cheap as they can. Besides that I have no idea [Laughs]. They just hang in there and see what—“We’ll pull through.” But if they can't, or like they go out and keep losing money, they’ll probably wind up just tying the boat there and just waiting ‘til better things to happen. But it’s nothing that they can do, you know?
And it depends on Mother Nature too. Sometimes you have a better season, better—maybe this year is a better season. Even if the price of shrimp is low or the fuel is high but Mother Nature supports them, and this year is very good. Mother Nature have shrimp out there for them and keep them alive, because [Laughs] more shrimp; more money. [Laughs]
Do you also see a younger, a new generation of people who are going into the industry?
No, I haven’t seen that because I wouldn’t blame them. A lot of my friends and uncles they have a lot of kids growing, 20—30 years old; they went with their parent or brother and sister and very tough work, very hard work. And even if they want to, I don’t think their parent would let them to because, “I have been through here. And you stay in school or do whatever, but don’t come here and follow my footsteps and ending up like —.” It’s kind of too late to start it now.
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
