Along the shoreline of Tampa Bay, everyday folks try their luck at a beautiful catch much like those in many coastal communities around the Gulf, America’s waterways, and beyond. At the same time, these communities were recently challenged by back-to-back catastrophic hurricanes (Helene and Milton) and face longer term stressors such as harmful algae blooms, economic shocks, and complicated relationships with Gulf policy makers and scientists. This paper explores the preliminary findings of a year-long interdisciplinary social science survey conducted by undergraduates and faculty partners across 6 sectors of Tampa Bay to evaluate shoreline fishing habits and risk perceptions among shoreline fishers. These early results offer intriguing overall insights into fishers’ typical patterns of fishing site choices, time spent fishing, and most popular species targeted. Moreover, they demonstrate patterns in risk avoidance, including insights into community-knowledge and suspicions about seafood contamination and the ways it impacts fishers’ behavior. They also provide early insights into who fishers trust in making consumption decisions, which is extremely helpful to public health authorities and managers of public resources. Beyond consumption, our results also indicate how fishers have responded to hurricanes and resulting changes in available shore fishing locations. The patterns established by this study can contribute to a deeper understanding of seafood and coastal hazard risk analysis among coastal communities across the Gulf and also provide an important window into how historically recognized contaminants (e.g. sewage) rank among contaminants of emerging concern (e.g. PFAS). As the study progresses further, we look forward to developing additional insights in conjunction with physical analyses from the marine scientists on our broader team.