Month: March 2026

Young Salt

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” — Isak Dineson

It is just grainy light outside and Trey King is trundling his cart across an empty stretch of beach toward the water. In the cart are several five-gallon buckets that he will carry into the Gulf to harvest sea water, for the purpose of making salt. It is cold on this January morning and the beach is quiet. A few birds that look like sandpipers are milling about in the foreshore and a snowbird or two lurks in the distance. Reports of a great white shark moving through the area surfaced days ago but, for now, the twelve-foot tourist is nowhere to be seen.

On this raw winter morning King is decked out in waders and ball cap and he looks like a man ready to work. For the past year he has come to this spot in Gulf Shores twice a month to collect the raw materials for his trade. In the next hour will make a few trips from the water to his trailer, which is hitched to his truck in a lot at the intersection of 59 and 182, next to The Hangout. When he started this gig in late 2024, King would haul the buckets back by hand — but he quickly learned he was making a rookie mistake. King is in his early 30s with a rangy, athletic build but even the fittest of sorts needs wheels for this gig — those buckets get heavy.

By the time he enters the Gulf it is lighter out and the joinery between sea and sky does not show. The muted greens and blues are bordered by the whites of clouds and beach, and the calming hues resemble a painted scene from a dentist office. The party-vibes this stretch of beach is known for are nil at this hour.

Before heading into the water, King is careful to make sure it’s light enough to see. He has a family and will not abide any safety risks. On this morning the Gulf looks tranquil, but as someone who grew up on the Eastern Shore, he knows about the subtleties of rip tides and the need to respect the authority of the sea.

“Sometimes I go out there and it’s pretty sketchy,” he says. “But I got kids. I gotta be careful.”

This is an ideal time to harvest, he says, because there are no swimmers at this hour. That is important because even the faintest trace of oil-based sunscreen can taint a sample and render the water unusable. King also doesn’t harvest after rainstorms, which can yield runoff and create a host of problems.

“There have been times I’ve gone into the Gulf and the water looks like bottled water,” he says. “There have been other times when it is not that clean. That is where environmental stewardship comes in. I put a lot of credence and faith into the Gulf, but there is also the saying ‘trust but verify.’ I need to make sure I’m providing a consistent product. And part of that consistency comes with making sure my source is as reliable as possible.”

Read more at MobileBaykeeper.org.

Chicken-Backs, A Bucket, And Some String 

Somewhere down the line, I became a crabber. I do not mean to imply that I am a crabber in any commercial sense, nor does my habit require any special know-how. My style of crabbing is a form of self-care — a way of casting off the cobwebs at the end of day and fleeing from the rigors of the daily slog. 

All that’s required for this endeavor is a one-gallon bucket, a cheap ball of string, and a pack of chicken-backs from Greer’s cost-saver. For these adventures I often roll with my girlfriend and her cattle dog, Ernie; other times I fly solo. But I am hardly ever alone. 

Like any good dive bar, the pier has its regulars. Some of these folks bring chairs and large Igloo coolers and make a day of it. Some even share their bounty if they know you’re making gumbo that night. When I decided to try my luck a few days after Mardi Gras, the place was deserted — one of the few times that has happened. My only companions were a colony of brown pelicans situated to the east of the pier, nestled around some ravaged pilings that once supported a Live Bait shop. This is a real party spot for pelicans, and the action goes all year long, as if they can’t stop celebrating the demise of DDT. 

In warmer months the gators come out, cruising about the perimeter and basking in the chicken scents like cars at a Foosackly’s drive thru. It’s not uncommon on those days to find one on the end of your string, and a smart crabber knows some company’s not worth getting that close to.

On a decent outing — these are usually attended by a slack tide — I’ll catch a dozen or so crabs of legal size (roughly the length of your iPhone) and call it a day. I’ll freeze them for a future dish or share with Nolton Lumar, the gumbo maestro profiled last issue who also makes a mean crab and shrimp stew. I no longer fish when I’m on the Causeway, as I never catch much. Patric Garmeson, an in-shore fishing captain interviewed in this issue, says the mud-dumping that began fourteen years ago smothered a key oyster reef south of the Causeway and killed what was once a hot-spot for anglers. Knowing that, I’ll stick to the crabbing in these parts, which is more or less a sure thing. 

When you eat your catch, you become more conscious of water health and the issues that threaten it. Yet there is a part of you that wants to forget those threats. The reason you’re out on the water in the first place is to escape from the hellhounds of the modern world. But when you fish or crab or spend any length of time on the Bay, you become attuned to the subtleties of the watershed. You notice things like turbidity and changes to the shoreline, and how the claws of a crab turn brilliant blue in the fall after molting. You become keenly aware of the fragility of our estuary. Industrial threats like dredge-spoil disposal and sewage runoff are never fully out of mind, and it becomes harder to ignore the universal law of cause and effect.  

Our cover story this issue profiles Trey King and his fledgling salt-making operation with Fairhope Salt Company. In just one year he’s made quite a splash on the culinary scene. His story is a testament to the demand for local flavor and the importance of environmental stewardship. It’s also a reminder of how much our watershed has to offer us when it’s healthy and protected. 

— from CURRENTS, spring 2026