Atlantic croaker (Micropogonias undulatus) occur from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to the Bay of Campeche, Mexico and are found throughout the Gulf of Mexico but are most abundant off the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi. Atlantic croaker belong to the drum family Sciaenidae, which contains 57 species in the western Atlantic Ocean. The size of individual Atlantic croaker is generally related to water depth with croaker commonly found around the mouth of the Mississippi River or in proximity to offshore platforms in depths greater than 40m and smaller croaker found in the shallower depths of the Gulf’s nearshore waters, bays, and estuaries. Because Atlantic croaker tolerate a wide range of salinities from 0-70 parts per thousand, temperature appears to be the primary driver in determining distributions and movement patterns throughout their life. Croaker are a very hardy fish and easy to collect. As a result, most of the prevailing research examining croaker has been using them as test subjects for endocrine and toxicology research and to study the effect of chemical toxins, climate change, and environmental variables. There is actually little recent work on the species and currently no management other than through bycatch regulations in the shrimp fisheries and a live bait industry. The history of the commercial croaker fishery in the Gulf of Mexico began with shrimping and bycatch. Along the east coast of the United States, there has always been a large food-fish fishery for Atlantic croaker. In the Gulf, the majority of commercial landings of croaker were for the purpose of producing pet food. Many tons of Atlantic croaker were captured incidentally in shrimp trawls prior to the 1950s, making up as much as 50-70% of the total finfish bycatch. Beginning in the early 1950s, several processors began to explore turning the discards into a profitable secondary market referred to as the ‘Groundfish’ fishery. Large croaker were retained and sold in a fresh fish market out of Alabama to the east coast and the smaller fish were cooked, ground, and canned in Mississippi and Louisiana as cat food. At the height of the groundfish fishery in the late 1950s, approximately 50 vessels or ‘croaker boats’ were harvesting fish to support the seven plants operating in Louisiana and Mississippi, landing around 122M pounds of groundfish annually. By the early 1970s, roughly 20 vessels were still fishing and, by 1978, there were only 15 croaker boats still in the fleet as the industry declined. The first pet food plant was established in Pascagoula, Mississippi around 1954 and two more opened by 1957. By the late 1950s, there was a total of seven plants (four canning for pet food, three freezing for foodfish, and one reduction plant) in operation handling groundfish along the northern Gulf. The last boatloads of croaker for pet food were unloaded around 1994 and the groundfish fishery effectively disappeared. The foodfish fishery out of Alabama ended around 1974 as the east coast found its own Atlantic croaker populations rebounding to the point of supporting their own local fisheries. There have been minimal commercial landings since the mid-1990s for croaker from the Gulf. A new fishery has been developing over the last 15 years in the western Gulf for Atlantic croaker. Since about 1996, a significant bait industry has developed targeting juvenile croaker of various sizes for live bait in a number of other recreational fisheries. In Texas in particular, this industry has rapidly expanded to incredible size and value. Traditional bait shrimp trawlers have begun changing their techniques to allow for their maximum bycatch allowance to be filled by young croaker. Sales are made at the bait houses and in turn sold to anglers on an individual fish basis. In some places, live Atlantic croaker are selling for as much as $12.00/dozen. Future research should focus on the impacts of river discharge and environmental factors on the population dynamics of Atlantic croaker in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the large scale shrimping effort, impacts of bycatch on the demographics of Atlantic croaker have not been thoroughly investigated in the Gulf of Mexico. Heavy fishing pressure can lead to fisheries-​induced evolution leading to decreases in length-at-age and early maturation. Research should also be directed at identifying the locations and environmental characteristics associated with Atlantic croaker spawning. Atlantic croaker are considered a forage fish given its linkage between upper and lower trophic levels; however, a holistic understanding of the role of croaker in the Gulf ecosystem and consequences for declines in biomass on ecosystem function has yet to be investigated.