Walking into Island Seafood on Lumpkin Road, there's an odor of fish and deep fried batter.

The 34-year-old seafood market gets its fresh catch from Beaufort, S.C., each week. Live crabs occasionally escape their baskets and roam the store.

At the helm is Cynthia Duncan, who runs the register when she's not doing the books.

Ms. Duncan's former husband, James, started Island Seafood in 1975. She's been running the market since the mid-1990s -- and five years ago bought out her ex-husband's interest in the store.

The store's best-selling fish is bream, which is why it is in the lead spot closest to the front door in the fish bunker.

The market gets its fish, crab and shrimp from the South Carolina coast. The oysters come in from Florida.

The crabs are stored in bushel baskets in a cooler in the back of the business, brought in a basket at a time for sale.

"They are alive in there," Ms. Duncan said. "They escape, but they don't go far. I've found them in my office. I'll get tongs (to pick them up)," she said.

"Never a dull moment in the fish market," said market manager Sam Bryant III.

He's worked at the market since his teen years, and has spent the last dozen years managing it.

Ms. Duncan can still do it all, from deveining shrimp to gutting fish, though she only does it when Mr. Bryant goes on vacation. The last time she filled in on the preparation station, she had a dream about gutting fish that night.

Island Seafood is closed Sundays and Mondays. Tuesdays through Thursdays are "coasting days," Mr. Bryant said.

Fridays and Saturdays have a full crew on deck, four full-time employees and two part-timers -- and Ms. Duncan.

"There is a traffic jam on Friday just waiting to get in," Mr. Bryant said.

At its peak, the market had 10 employees. And then grocery store chains started to carry seafood.

"Back in the day, there were a few other fish markets, but you didn't have shrimp and seafood in the grocery store. You had to come to places like Island Seafood to get it," Ms. Duncan said. "For a long time, we didn't cook."

Part of adapting to the changing business environment was frying or steaming fish, offering buckets of fish in the same ilk that KFC offers a bucket of chicken.

"You've got to change with the times. That's what we've done."

Everything is cooked to order; there isn't anything pre-cooked waiting for customers to buy it from under heat lamps.

James Duncan opened the market in 1975, down the street from where it is now, after receiving a suggestion to get into the fish market business. He was working for a bank, Ms. Duncan said, and wanted to go into business for himself.

She said she spent much of the early days at home, raising three children, and then working at the market on Fridays.

Even now, at age 61, Ms. Duncan splits her time between family and the business, spending her mornings babysitting her grandchildren -- her grandnieces and grandnephews too.

"I feel like I'm hopping all the time," she said.

So she relies a lot on Mr. Bryant, who is considered more of a partner in the business than simply an employee.

She entered new territory in 2004 when she bought Island Seafood; she assumed the role of running the behind-the-scenes aspects of the business. In her mid-50s, she was thrust into learning computers.

"I know how to do my fish market business on the computer, and e-mails, other than that ..."

One of the perks of working in a fish market is being able to eat for free.

Mr. Bryant, after 25 years there, doesn't eat as much as he once did, some of it from weariness of eating so much seafood for so many years.

"I can't hold as much as I used to, so now it is just nibbling," said the 41-year-old.

Ms. Duncan still takes it home every Thursday.

"Unfortunately, I eat a lot of the fried; I should eat more baked food," she said. "When I was growing up, momma made us fish sticks. That was our fish fry."

She's never gone back to fish sticks.

Island Seafood has won awards for its bumper stickers, many of which are decorations on the fish bunkers: "Eat fish, live longer. Eat oysters, love longer" or the more prevalent "I got my crabs at Island Seafood."

With years of loyal customers that are considered family, there are an uncountable number of bumper stickers riding around the metro area.

Employees are family, too.

Just like a mom, Mr. Bryant said of Ms. Duncan.

"She's got a good crew, so she tries to help us. Someone might need a loan to get them through the week. A lot of jobs, you can't just borrow no money. She always steps in if you need a little loan," Mr. Bryant said. "No strikes against you."

Family involved

All of her three children have worked in the market.

Matt Duncan, the youngest, said gutting fish was the worst part of the job.

"I remember picking up the big buckets of fish and the dirty water getting all over you. You can't get the smell off of you for four days," he recalled.

And then there is the fish de-scaling machine.

"That thing scared me when I was young. When you remove that panel, it looks like something from the 1300s."

But that machine, which removes the scales from fish, saves about 70 percent of the work.

Mr. Duncan said his experiences convinced him that he didn't want to stick with the family business as a career. He's now a lawyer and just opened his own bankruptcy-based law firm.

"Coming here was a right of passage. Get your stripes and move on," he said.

He followed his father into the legal profession. At age 37, James Duncan went to law school and then opened his own practice.

The Duncans' oldest son, Rik, is in civil service at Fort Gordon. Daughter Laura is a part-time teacher.

Rik Duncan is also the store's handyman.

Mr. Bryant's history with the market starts in 1984, when he was in middle school. Because the business had little parking, he would direct traffic into the lot on busy days.

"Kind of hung in there. Before you know it, I'm watching people come and go. Time goes by and I'm in management," Mr. Bryant said.

The parking problem was alleviated in 2005, when Ms. Duncan bought the next door building -- now occupied by a barbecue restaurant -- and took down the fence that separated the properties. Although she gets rental income from it, the sole reason for buying the building was to get rid of the fence.

Ms. Duncan, holding a Georgia Bulldogs bag, said she is "big" into SEC football and the Atlanta Falcons.

"My mother was a big football fan. I learned early," she said. "She was from Minnesota, so we were Vikings fans and had a passion for the Pittsburgh Steelers. She grew to like Atlanta."

She was once a regular at Falcons games, though not recently. The last time she was at a Georgia game was when her youngest son was attending the university.

Ms. Duncan's father was from Waynesboro, Ga., so when he got out of the Navy, he and his wife relocated to Augusta.

"She never wanted to go back to the cold country," said Ms. Duncan, who was born in Augusta in 1948.

She attended Augusta College for two years before stopping. The problem was not being able to decide on a major.

But she had met her future husband at the college, though they didn't get married until 1977, after she had moved to Atlanta and returned home.

When Ms. Duncan has the time, she travels to Hilton Head for recreation, not just to pick up the catch of the day. She is part-owner of a condominium there and gets to use it every five weeks.

Since she started babysitting, she hasn't been using the time. But it does get used in the summer when the grandchildren can play at the beach.

Ms. Duncan's love of Hilton Head was strong enough that she had the side of Island Seafood painted in a mural to resemble the fish joints in the coastal city.

Helping others

Island Seafood donates fish to the Shiloh Community Center and is the likely source for any fish served at a church fish fry -- deeply discounted to help out the churches.

Ms. Duncan said the business once sponsored sports teams as well, but now does its part to help kids by donating fish to elementary school teachers for art projects. The kids will paint the real fish and press it onto paper. Some of the art projects hang on the walls.

Ms. Duncan said she's waiting another three years before the next chapter of the market's history gets written. That's when she'll retire.

"I hope I get first pick" when she decides to sell, Mr. Bryant said. Ms. Duncan has Mr. Bryant in mind as the next owner of Island Seafood.

"I gotta. It's all I know," he said.

Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352 or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com.