THE COAST 73 MARITIME & SEAFOOD INDUSTRY MUSEUM The Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum was established in 1986 to preserve and interpret the maritime history and heritage of Biloxi and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It accomplishes this mission through an array of exhibits and an extraordinary collection of photographs which tell the story from the time of the first Native American settlement through generations of immigrants whose journey contributed to the melting-pot culture of the Gulf Coast. The Museum exhibits hundreds of one- of-a-kind artifacts, all the while telling the tale of more than 300 years of history, culture, and heritage. A feature of the Grand Hall in the Museum is the “Nydia,” a thirty-foot gaff-rigged cabin sloop built in Biloxi in 1898 at the Johnson Shipyard. PHOTO COURTESY OF MARITIME & SEAFOOD INDUSTRY MUSEUM