While curating the Fishing Back When section for the December issue of National Fisherman, I read a story about Hurricane Rita, the destructive storm that ravaged the Gulf Coast, picking up where Hurricane Katrina had left off just a few weeks before.

Because the damage from the hurricane was mainly from water instead of wind, it caused much more damage to the seafood industry’s shoreside infrastructure.

Hurricane Rita is often described as a forgotten storm, as it was not as covered in mainstream media as Hurricane Katrina was. But fishermen surely remember.

“We got socked in the jaw and then kicked in the gut,” said Dulac, La., shrimp packer Robert J. Samanie.

But even immediately following the storm, fishermen were hopeful.

“Your true commercial fishermen, they’re getting back together right now to go back to work,” said Samanie.

Story after story of fishermen helping each other get back on their feet was reported in the months after the storm. That fishing family motif that everyone in the industry always talks about shined through the otherwise awful hurricane season the gulf saw that year.

George Barisich, president of the United Commercial Fishermen’s Association, was made homeless by Hurricane Katrina, but was helping to direct supplies to families in need.

Cindy Johnson of Bayou La Batre, Ala., wife of fisherman Doug Johnson, was delivering supplies to the coast just before Rita and was brought to tears by the destruction that had already happened.

“It was like traveling through a nightmare,” she said.

But, as they say, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. And this is especially true of fishermen.

Johnson recalled moving to Alabama over 20 years prior and not being a fan of the smell coming from the oyster, shrimp and crab plants and the docks. But she remembered something her grandfather used to say about the smell of his pig farm. It was a money smell.

And that money smell is coming back to the Gulf Coast, despite all the hardships that fishermen have gone through.