The Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival takes place every year in early May along the waterfront in Fernandina Beach, celebrating the island's identity as a shrimping port. Florida's shrimping industry has contracted significantly in recent decades, but Fernandina Beach has held on as one of the few working shrimp ports on the state's Atlantic coast, and the festival acknowledges that heritage directly — there are shrimp cooking competitions, boats to tour, and enough fried shrimp available to feed a fleet.
Beyond the food, the festival draws arts and crafts vendors, live music, and the general festivity of a town that takes its self-image seriously. If you happen to be in the area in early May, it is a genuinely local event rather than a contrived tourist production. The waterfront setting, with the shrimp boats visible in the harbor and the Victorian downtown a short walk away, provides a context that makes the festival more than a fair.