Meet the new Shrimp Queen, part of a family that has spent generations on the MS Coast

All hail 2024 Shrimp Queen Baylie Gollott-Ho of Woolmarket.

She was crowned this weekend during activities for the Blessing of the Fleet , a Biloxi event ceremonially marking the start of shrimp season.

The weekend bore witness to plates of shrimp, decorated shrimping and pleasure boats and religious ceremonies.

Gollott-Ho is a 16-year-old rising junior at St. Patrick’s Catholic High School. She’s a lifelong resident of the Coast, who plays volleyball, performs studio dance and works part-time in the family business.

She was the youngest of eight women who competed for the title. The pageant challenges contestants to present a display of their heritage before a panel of judges. It is not strictly a beauty pageant, though all contestants are beautiful, an event organizer said.

Contestants are required to have familial ties to the Gulf Coast shrimping industry. For Gollott-Ho, it wasn’t too hard to prove – both her maternal and paternal sides of the family have spent generations in the fishing industry.

“We are over-the-moon proud of her,” Gollot-Ho’s mother, Trulie Gollott, said. “She’s been an outstanding representation of her heritage.”

Her maternal great-grandfather started C.F. Gollott and Sons Seafood in Biloxi. It’s a factory that processes and packages Gulf-caught seafood. Gollott-Ho works there part-time. On her father’s side are fishermen who immigrated to the Coast from Vietnam in the ‘70s.

She worked for about a month and a half cataloging old newspaper clippings and interviewing family members to piece together the project she presented to the judges. She created a family tree, expecting the project to be simple. Instead, she ran out of room on her poster, going back 10 generations.

Her project has made her realize how connected she is to the rest of the shrimping families on the Coast, she said.

Gollot-Ho plans to save her winnings, $2,000, for the future. She’s torn between going to Mississippi State or Ole Miss. She’s also torn on going to work for the family seafood factory in the future or paving her own way and doing something else entirely.

She was also named Miss Seafood Heritage and sold the most ads of the contestants, bumping up her total winnings.

”All of us were deserving,” the now reigning queen said. “But I think what set me aside was confidence. I have a heritage on both sides and am currently involved. Be better, Baylie, I told myself.”

Other winners

Gollott-Ho’s victory was one part of a full weekend. Country-gospel trio Chapel Hart made an appearance, as did plenty of visitors and a parade of boats.

Here are the other winners of Blessing of the Fleet:

• Van Bat Pham of Biloxi was crowned as Shrimp King 2024. He was born in South Vietnam and immigrated to the Gulf Coast in the ‘80s, where he went to work as a fisherman, like his father. He also founded a restaurant in Alabama, called Saigon Noodle House, and operates a fishing boat called “Lucky One.”
• Katie Parker won Shrimp Queen runner-up. Bridgette Mitchell and Kadie Harris won second and third place runner up.
• “Gunsmoke” won the prize for best decorated work boat. “My Sons” and “Mark and Dawn” won second and third place.
• “Midnight Blues” won a prize for best participation and “Lady Bella” won the prize for the best pleasure boat.