10/16/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19mvDEnkXG/?mibextid=wwXIfr
THIS BON SECOUR SEAFOOD BUSINESS HAS BEEN FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1971.
Aquila Seafood in Bon Secour has spent more than fifty years in the seafood business, with Royal Red shrimp closely associated with its name.
The market sits at 17309 River Road, placing its story within one of coastal Alabama’s seafood communities.
Its listed products include shrimp, fish, crab, and oysters. Specialty orders are another part of the business, allowing customers to arrange purchases ahead of pickup.
Royal Reds give the market a connection to a particularly interesting part of the Gulf seafood trade.
These shrimp come from deep water, requiring boats and equipment suited to harvesting far below the surface.
An Alabama seafood industry account describes fishing grounds roughly twelve hundred to eighteen hundred feet deep.
That depth changes the work involved. Longer cables, specialized equipment, and a search for productive fishing grounds all become part of bringing the shrimp aboard.
Handling them after harvest matters, too. Royal Reds are frozen promptly, with individual quick freezing among the methods used to preserve quality.
That means frozen seafood can represent careful handling close to the moment of harvest.
Aquila is specifically identified in Alabama seafood coverage among the businesses connected with bringing Royal Reds to Gulf Coast markets.
The shrimp’s history also includes changing customer tastes. In the nineteen seventies, unfamiliarity sometimes made them harder to sell, even at prices below more familiar shrimp varieties.
Their reputation grew over time.
That gives a purchase at a named seafood market a larger backstory, connecting family businesses with boats, processing methods, and customers learning about a different catch.
Aquila’s own timeline reaches back to that same decade.
The business began in 1971 and remains identified with Bon Secour, River Road, and Royal Red shrimp.
Its family ownership dates to 1971, according to Alabama’s tourism bureau.
