After a year changed by pandemic, Beaufort Shrimp Festival came back in full swing
Thousands of shrimp and shrimp fans descended on Beaufort this weekend for the city’s annual Shrimp Festival, back to its rollicking weekend format after last year’s pandemic-altered plans.
People milled around Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park Saturday afternoon as the Parris Island Rock Band finished their soundcheck, posing for photos with a Forrest Gump impersonator and eating hot, golden-fried shrimp.
“We’ve got shrimpers and we’ve got Marines,” host Mike Partain said from the stage. “If it wasn’t for shrimpers and Marines, our economy here in the Sea Islands would’ve gone to zilch in the 1910s, 20s.”
In the crowd, Bill and Paulina Harnish were enjoying their first-ever visit to the festival. The couple from Mount Pleasant said that they’d toyed with the idea of moving to Beaufort for 20 years and were impressed with how well-organized the festival was.
“We love Beaufort, it’s a great place,” Bill Harnish said. “We just wanted to come spend time in beautiful Beaufort.”
In 2020, COVID sanctions — namely social distancing requirements and restrictions on large-scale events — led organizers to “reimagine” the festival as a three-weekend restaurant event, with local spots like Fat Patties and Old Bull Tavern putting out special shrimp tasting menus and seafood-themed promotions.
The theme for the 2020 festival was “The Shrimp Must Go On!” This weekend, volunteers went around with “Shrimp Happens!” on their T-shirts.
Festival-goers seemed unbothered by the continuing pandemic, even though the state saw a near-record 500 deaths from COVID-19 over the past week while only about 50.1% of Beaufort County residents are fully vaccinated. Masks were hard to come by and social distancing seemed like a thing of the past.
Carole Ingram, the president of the Sea Island Rotary Club, said it was “amazing” to see the festival back to business as usual. Saturday marked the Rotary Club’s 13th Annual Shrimp Race, the organization’s biggest fundraiser of the year.
Attendees can pay to “sponsor” one of the club’s 5,000 rubber shrimp competitors, which are dropped from shrimping boat nets into the Beaufort River.
The sponsors of the first 10 shrimp to float to the finish line share a $10,000 prize pot; one shrimp’s number is drawn ahead of the race and if that shrimp is among the first 100 to finish, its sponsor wins $30,000.
Ingram said that as of her last count, the Rotary Club had gotten around 3,500 shrimp sponsored. Nearby, attendees scanned a list of names and shrimp numbers stapled to plywood to make sure they knew who they were betting on. The money raised, Ingram said, funded the Rotary Club’s scholarship and school uniform programs, along with other charity events.
“It’s great to see the community come together like this,” she said.
Up on stage, the Marines had finished their warm-up, launching into a version of the Zac Brown Band’s “Chicken Fried.”
“Who am I kidding? Nobody’s eating chicken here,” the lead singer said. “With a little bit of shrimp-fried...”