Michael Williams and Kerry Mitchell were tired of not being heard. So they decided to do something about it. In February 2023, the husband-and-wife duo who runs Salty Pirates Seafood formed the Alabama Commercial Fishermen Association, a non-profit that represents the interests of fishermen, oystermen, shrimpers, and anyone else who works to put Gulf seafood on our table.
“One of the reasons we started this organization is so the fishermen can have a voice and know what’s going on in the commercial fishing community,” Kerry Mitchell tells me from the Salty Pirate dock in Dauphin Island. “If any resources do come down – grants, floodwater money, funds, things [seafood workers] never qualify for – we want an honest way to get this money out to fishermen.”
According to Mitchell, there has been disaster relief money floating around the past few years that local fishermen didn’t qualify for and should have, including COVID-relief and floodwater spillway disaster funds.
“A lot of the paperwork is so difficult, fishermen can’t fill it out,” Mitchell says. “For the COVID-funds, you had to show a loss for three years and the [oyster season] wasn’t open in 2018, so it was impossible to show a loss.”
Together, this husband and wife team works by day at Salty Pirates Seafood, a shrimping and wild oystering operation that sells directly from the dock, just off DeSoto Avenue near the Dauphin Island bridge. They are just one couple that works in Alabama’s seafood industry, but they could be any outfit that shrimps or fishes the waters of the Gulf and Mobile Bay.
Read more from Mobile Bayekeeper’s CURRENTS.
Caine O'Rear 