Abstract
The state of Alabama has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on shoreline restoration projects, with one goal being to enhance shoreline habitats for fisheries species. For example, $3 million was spent in 2010 to rebuild Little Bay Peninsula and shelter Little Bay in Mississippi Sound. Despite this significant financial investment, post-restoration monitoring of how this project benefits fisheries species has so far been limited. To address this, we deployed an array of acoustic tracking receivers in Little Bay and adjacent Little River to monitor the habitat use of red drum. We established that red drum as small as 12 cm can carry acoustic tags, and have begun tracking the movements of red drum of all age-classes, including young-of-the-year juveniles that have never previously been tracked. We will use this initial tracking data to identify hotspots of red drum activity, where we will deploy additional receivers to form VPS arrays, which can triangulate the location of a fish to within a few meters. This will allow us to describe with exceptionally fine-scale spatial resolution the ways in which red drum use the restoration structures and the habitats they enhance within the Little Bay seascape. If sufficient funding can be secured, we also have a unique opportunity to compare fish habitat use and movement in an established restored habitat (Little Bay Peninsula) to that in a newly restored habitat, Point aux Pins Peninsula, where breakwater protection structures were installed in August 2020. The metrics of habitat use and function derived in this study will be used to assess the value of future coastal restoration initiatives for red drum and other economically and culturally important species.
