I was given Mr. Gazzier’s phone number the day before by an acquaintance. When I called, his daughter/secretary said he had time to meet with me, so I should come over. About 10 minutes later we met in his office at his shipyard in Bayou la Batre.

Mr. Gazzier was born in 1947 and built his first boat when he was 13. Both his father and grandfather were in the boat building business. He ran his own shrimp boat and opened a shipyard in the mid-1970s to build shrimpboats for him and others. In about 1979 he was approached by a seismograph company doing work in Mobile Bay to repair their vessels. Several years later he designed and built new boats which he leased to the company and significantly increased their production. Around the same time, he also took on projects for boats working overseas. He got out of the new boat building business in the late 1990s and he talks about workforce issues he faced. The seismograph boats were last used in oilfield work in 2000 and he discusses changes in seismograph work, particularly the internationalization. The boats are now used in coastal restoration projects. At the time of the interview, he was semi-retired, and his business was doing a variety of things: operated a seafood processing plant, repair work, coastal restoration, etc.