Shaped by the blessing of the Gulf, which provided so much protein. That's exactly right. When you talk about how important it was to Native American tribes, of course it was important for white settlers who came in there and pushed them aside. Tell us the whole dynamic and how white settlers capitalized on the abundance of the Gulf of Mexico to make that coastline a beautiful place to settle.

The Spanish were the first to successfully settle the Gulf of Mexico, at least among Europeans. Indeed, they did push aside many of the Native groups, both through warfare but also their diseases had a devastating impact on Native peoples. The Spanish occupied the Gulf of Mexico for more than 300 years. The French settled certain parts of the Gulf of Mexico for a few years and the British as well. Interestingly enough, none of those developed a commercial fishing trade. The British started to, but they weren't on the Gulf long enough to really get any traction. So it was left to enterprising Americans, I'll like to say, to develop a commercial fishing trade on the Gulf of Mexico, starting in the early 19th century. Looking

back on how we commercialized and industrialized the coast, you saw the mountains of shells from Native American culture. And today we see sort of the modern-day equivalent to that contaminated dredge mounds. You can draw some conclusions from that.