80-year-old shrimper still selling catch to St. Helena’s Gay Fish Co. ‘Kids won’t do this’
With muscly tan forearms that belie his age, Jim Buchanan hoists a 60-pound basket of fat white roe-shrimp onto the dock at Gay Fish Co. on St. Helena Island. The former Marine helicopter and commercial jet pilot, who became a shrimp boat captain after retiring from a career flying airplanes, netted the sweet-tasting catch during a drag on the Morgan River.
“It’s hard work and, if you don’t like it, good God, it would be absolute misery,” Buchanan says.
Buchanan, who is 80, won’t retire, he says with a smile, “Until somebody finds me on the back deck.” He enjoys being on the ocean and the hard work.
These days, the Fripp Island man is a rare breed: He’s one of about 20 shrimp boat captains still working in Beaufort County. Buchanan owns the 46-foot Mrs. B., named after his wife’s Port Royal crafts, art and home accessories shop.
Thirty years ago, 100 commercial shrimp boats trawled Beaufort County waters for shrimp, which are known for their delicate texture and buttery taste — some would argue they’re the best in the world. In those days, the catch was delivered to 20 some docks located on creeks located across the county. A handful of shrimp docks remain today.
“Kids don’t want to do this,” says Buchanan. “This is hard work.”
Buchanan is one of five captains who own boats that dock and sell their catches at one of the surviving docks — Gay Fish Co., a St. Helena Island landmark that turns 75 this year, making it one of the oldest shrimping businesses in Beaufort County.
After all these years, Gay Fish is an iconic seafood stop between Fripp Island and Beaufort. And it relies on independent operators like Buchanan for its supplies of fresh shrimp.
“It’s literally like working with family,” Gay Fish’s Cyndy Carr says.
Generational business persists
The family-owned business, which boasts that it’s entirely “veteran-owned,” was started by Carr’s grandparents, John H. Gay Sr., and his wife, Hilda Smith Gay. They were living on Lady’s Island in the 1940s. Mr. Gay was working as an electrician at the Naval Hospital in Port Royal and shrimping on the side. When he started making a little money, the couple decided to buy land along St. Helena’s Ward Creek. Gay Fish opened in 1948.
“It’s kind of gone from one generation to the next,” Carr says. “You do what you know.”
Today, the Gay’s son and Carr’s father, 77-year-old Charles Gay, continues to work at the shrimping business six days a week. He owns it with his brother, Robert, and son, Tim.
The captains who dock here pay no rent and a minimal ice fee in exchange for selling directly to Gay Fish, which, in turn, sells shrimp in a narrow retail store in the front of the property. Gay Fish also supplies fuel, which is deducted from the pay boat owners receive for shrimp.
Besides seafood, you can find important history at the retail store, like two framed receipts for $26,000 of shrimp the Gays sold to Paramount Pictures in 1993. That shrimp was used in a scene from “Forrest Gump,” which was filmed in the Beaufort area, in which Forrest and Lt. Dan hit pay dirt, catching a huge haul of shrimp after a hurricane destroyed the rest of the shrimp boat fleet. Close observers will find a blooper — some of the Gay Fish shrimp shown in the scene had already been de-headed.
“I wish they would come again,” Carr says.
The captain’s chair of the shrimp boat used during the filming of the “Prince of Tides” in 1991 also sits in the entryway.
It’s well with my soul
A Beaufort native who married her high school sweetheart, Carr decided to return to help run the storied business in 2022 after years working in mortgage lending. She has no regrets. While the work is more physical, and she’s making less money, Carr says, the trade off is peace of mind. The outline of a tiny hand is imprinted in the concrete of the processing floor. It’s Carr’s, who left her mark on the business when she was 4.
“It is well with my soul,” is the phrase that comes to Carr’s mind when she steps out back by the docks to take in the view and find a moment of peace during a hectic day.
One day earlier this week, shrimp boats with names such as Miss Lilly and Four Girls II — and Buchanan’s Mrs. B — were tied to the docks. Ward Creek carved a curvy path through a sea of green marsh grass en route to the fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean inlets of St. Helena and Port Royals sounds. Seagulls floated in the breeze, looking for scraps. Gay Fish is so close to the action it’s not uncommon for water to cover the docks or even the processing area during high tides.
“Hurricane Matthew really put a hurtin’ on us,” says Carr, pointing out roof and dock damage that remains from the 2016 storm.
Never been on a boat
In 1967, Buchanan was in his early 20s and a helicopter pilot at Marine Air Corps Station Beaufort. On the day his enlistment ended, at 8 a.m., he drove directly to a dock on Lady’s Island, where a captain interviewed him for a job working on a shrimp boat. Had he ever been on a shrimp boat? No. Had he ever seen a shrimp? Yes — in a shrimp cocktail. By 11 a.m., three hours after leaving the Marines, Buchanan had joined a shrimp boat. The owner was a Marine, too.
“That’s probably why he took me in,” Buchanan says.
He spent three years shrimping but eventually returned to the air and enjoyed a 35-year career flying commercial DC-9 jets and other corporate airplanes.
But Buchanan, who grew up on a farm outside of Chicago, returned to South Carolina and settled on Fripp Island 25 years ago. About 10 years ago, when he was around 70, he bought a shrimp boat.
“I said, ‘as long as I’m here, I might as well go back to it,’” Buchanan said. “I liked it.”
From the sea to sales
Buchanan lifts two baskets of shrimp packed on ice onto the dock and Gay Fish employee Jordan Burlew hauls them away on a two-wheeler to a processing area where they will be washed in fresh water, weighed and de-headed. It’s only 100 pounds. A sorry day. Buchanan says he’ll get $3.50 a pound for the big ones but it probably won’t pay for his fuel.
“Everyone’s crying the blues,” says Buchanan, referring to the radio chatter among shrimpers.
Buchanan started the day at 5:30 a.m., chugging up the Harbor River at 8 knots to the Morgan River. Once there, 25-foot-long arms called outriggers, one on each side, lowered 42-foot wide nets into the water. The nets funnel the shrimp into bags. Knots on the bottom of those bags are sometimes called “Oh Jesus Knots” because shrimp will escape if they’re inadvertently left open. A small “try” net is raised every 25 minutes. If just a few shrimp come up in the try bag, the nets are left in place. If there’s 75, “you’re’ doing pretty damn good,” and it’s time to raise the nets, Buchanan says.
Because of the meager catch, Buchanan returned early, at 1 p.m.
It was a matter of minutes before Buchanan’s catch of the day moved from the dock to a display counter in Gay Fish’s retail store in the front, where customers were waiting in line.
“Half of them are already gone,” Carr says.
Almost every creek had a dock
Sea Eagle Market owner Craig Reaves says about 15 shrimp boats requiring dock space are working north of the Broad River, all of them on St. Helena, with four or five working out of Bluffon and Hilton Head in southern Beaufort County.
Compare that to 1992, the year Reaves moved to the area, when there were 100 shrimp boats. Reaves still has a T-shirt from the mid-1990s that was produced for Beaufort’s first Bubba Gump Shrimp festival, which was named after the unforgettable shrimp-loving Bubba character in “Forrest Gump.” The T-shirt has the names of 88 local shrimp boats that were working in the area at the time.
More than 20 docks were serving those boats. “Almost every creek had a dock on it,” Reaves said.
Reasons for the decline of boats and docks are complex, Reaves says.
Fishermen got old, Reaves says, and younger generations did not followed previous generations into the business.
The rising cost of real estate near deep water also prompted some shrimp businesses to sell their land. Access and infrastructure went with it.
And in the early 2000s, shrimpers faced a double-whammy as shrimp prices declined and diesel fuel prices climbed.
Last year, Reaves says, diesel was going for over $5.
“It’s just hard to overcome those prices,” says Reaves, who is a board member of Southern Shrimp Alliance, which advocates for U.S. shrimpers. “In the mid 90s we were paying 95 cents.”
A big reason for the decline in shrimp prices has been a sharp increase in imported seafood raised on farms, primarily from southeast Asia, Reaves says. About 93 percent of the shrimp sold today in the United States is imported, he says.
‘Best seafood on the planet’
The challenges have forced local shrimp businesses to develop their own brands and niche markets.
A relentless promoter of the wild-caught seafood, Reaves says local fishermen have one major advantage: The Lowcountry environment and the excellent product it produces.
Local water quality isn’t polluted by big river systems, and the tides remove pollutants and recirculate nutrients, making it some of the best on the East Coast.
“We have the best seafood on planet earth right here in Beaufort County,” says Reaves, who also owns shrimp docks on St. Helena, along Village Creek, in addition to a seafood catering business and three retail outlets.
It’s up to producers to brag about the great product — and the benefits of buying local, he adds.
Reave’s business model is producing the best, not the most. “Cheap seafood ain’t good,” says a Sea Eagle Market T-shirt. “And good seafood ain’t cheap.”
Some good news on the horizon is the town of Port Royal is planning to demolish its old shrimp dock on Battery Creek to make way for a new dock and processing facility, providing another local location for shrimpers to offload.
Investing in the future
Gay Fish is making investments in capital improvements that it hopes will pay off in the future, Carr says. That includes a new ice machine that can churn out 6,500 pounds of ice in 24 hours. If the boats don’t have ice, Carr says, they can’t shrimp. Another recent purchase is a 40-foot-long freezer. The hope is enough shrimp will be caught to fill that freezer so it can be sold in the off-season.
Gay Fish is also capitalizing on social media — you can watch boats returning to the docks and shrimp being processed on Facebook — and it’s quick to seize on a marketing opportunity, like the 2022 Bigfoot sighting at Hunting Island State Park. Gay Fish wasted no time in producing T-shirts featuring a Sasquatch walking along clutching a big shrimp in its hand. It now sells an array of locally produced products from Seaside Farm margarita mix to cupcakes from Sweet Cakes Bakery in Sheldon to artwork by Jerry Watson, a former shrimper.
Tourists visiting the Sea Islands are a boost to the bottom line at Gay Fish Co., Carr says. Visitors are looking for a local experience, she says, and the Gays try to give to them. But it’s a favorite for locals, too.
‘How can you beat that?’
Buchanan’s neon green shirt is stained with paint from the last time he touched up his 64-year-old boat, which remains in good form despite the years. Just like Buchanan. But he’s not even the oldest shrimp boat captain who docks at Gay Fish. That would be Pete Pope of St. Helena. He’s 84.
Working on the ocean is what draws Buchanan to shrimping. “How can you beat that?” he says.
As a boat owner and captain, he’s his own boss and employer.
Each year, Buchanan pulls the boat out of the water to clean off the oyster shells and repaint the bottom. It’s a money pit, he says.
In the late 1960s, he remembers, some 200 shrimp boats worked out of the Beaufort area.
Lifting baskets full of shrimp and running nets up and down is not for everybody but Buchanan enjoys the physical demands of shrimping and so do his two crew members, who Buchanan says were basically born and raised on a shrimp boat. In the off-season, he works out at a gym to keep fit. During shrimp season, there’s no need.
This story was originally published June 12, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
