Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum

Croatian immigrants built Biloxi's first shrimp canneries in the 1880s. Through the mid-twentieth century, Biloxi processed more shrimp than any city on earth — a fact that shaped every other fact about the place. The Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum, established in 1986, holds what that meant: exhibits on shrimping, oystering, wooden boat building, net-making, marine blacksmithing, the shrimp peeling machine, and the fleet photographs that prove the scale. The Wade Guice Hurricane Museum within the facility documents what happened when the Gulf decided otherwise, in 1,400 square feet of exhibit space and a state-of-the-art theatre. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the original museum in August 2005. Nine years later, on August 2, 2014, a new three-story building containing 20,000 square feet opened to the public on Point Cadet. Outside, docked at the Schooner Pier Complex completed in June 2006, are the museum's two 65-foot two-masted Biloxi Schooner replicas, the *Glenn L. Swetman* and the *Mike Sekul* — the type of vessel used along the Gulf Coast from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, before marine engines changed what harvesting meant. The schooners are part of the exhibit. Vietnamese refugees rebuilt the fleet after Hurricane Camille in 1969, then again after Katrina. The Blessing of the Fleet, held each spring at the harbor, dates to the early 1900s. Open Monday through Saturday, 9am to 5pm. Admission charged.