JULY | AUGUST 2019 161t
o me, at least, the Mississippi Sound has always
been a thing of beauty. Grey and murky on cloudy
days, flashing blue under the sun, the water is silent
but for the soft splash of the waves; viewed from
a boat adrift amid the barrier islands, the world and its
troubles are far at bay. You are at peace and alone on the
empty sea.
Or maybe not alone. That’s what I realized this May,
bobbing in a boat near the Gulfport Harbor. Johnny Mar-
quez, my guide for the day, spied a flash beneath the water:
a sheepshead, he says, a tricky fish, good to eat but hard to
clean. I hadn’t seen a thing: I didn’t know how to look.
In terms of biomass and species diversity, the Gulf of
Mexico ranks higher than almost any sea in the world,
and Mississippi’s short bit of coastline is no exception.
Woven with bays and rivers, hemmed by barrier islands,
these counties are home to more than 200 species of fish.
Bullsharks and ladyfish, mullet and croaker, pompano,
tarpon, snapper—the list, of course, could go on. But while
Mississippi is well known for its seafood industry—espe-
cially its canning factories, which helped carry the Gulf
catch far afield—as far as I can tell, no historian has at-
tempted to account for the local tradition of sportsfishing.
That’s a shame: This pursuit has shaped the region from its
first days as an American territory.Marquez, the director of coastal programs with the Mis-
sissippi Wildlife Federation, had volunteered to cruise me
around the sound, showing me the ways of Mississippi fish-
ing—how to bait a hook so the shrimp still wriggles, attract-
ing our desired fish; how to cast a rod with a perfect flick of
the wrist; what spots are worthy; and what species offer the
most fun. We launched from the Gulfport Yacht Club just
after daybreak on a quiet Tuesday in May, cooler loaded,
three friends in tow.
Barely out of the harbor, we stopped in a spot where, as
far as I could tell, there was nothing to see—just another
blank expanse. But beneath us, it turned out, were piles of
crushed concrete and limestone, a part of the state’s system
of artificial reefs. These simple structures attract inver-
tebrate species, which in turn bring feeding fish. “So you
have a little bit better of a chance to actually catch a fish,
as opposed to just fishing in an open mud bottom,” Travis
Williams, the artificial reef bureau director with the Missis-
sippi Department of Marine Resources, tells me.
The state’s first man-made reefs were old automobiles,
sunk near the barrier islands in the 1960s. Over the next
decade, decommissioned military vessels were dropped
into the water, too. A wave of construction came after 1999
when the state launched an official plan for a reef program.
Today, there are 67 inshore reefs and 14 offshore reefs,ABOVE: The Gulfport Yacht Club is serene and beautiful at dawn. PREVIOUS: Johnny Marquez, director of coastal programs for the
Mississippi Wildlife Federation, retrieves a catch—though this fish was destined to be returned to the sea.