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Basic demographic data such as size variation in a stranded population can provide critical information about population dynamics, particularly for highly mobile marine mammals that can be difficult or costly to directly monitor. The common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) is found in coastal...

The Marine Education Center (MEC), part of the University of Southern Mississippi, recently expanded a multi-year Meaningful Watershed Education Experience (MWEE) program to reach students from across the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast. The program focuses on coastal hazard resilience and aligns...

As glacio-eustatic sea-level change continues to impact coastal communities, an increased understanding of surface elevation changes within coastal areas is crucial to predicting the fate of coastal infrastructure, ecosystems, and habitats. The purpose of this study is to examine the spatial extent ...

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) was founded in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWH) with a commitment of $500 million in non-penalty funds by BP to conduct science to understand the impacts of oil spills on the environment and to public health. Now in its tenth and final ...

Oysters and other bivalve shellfish assimilate elements from the environment into their shell and soft tissues, making them potentially useful bioindicators of pollution to local waters. Unlike soft tissues, shell material is not readily metabolized and may provide a temporally explicit record of pa...

Manmade freshwater diversion efforts in Louisiana will likely drive gradual community shifts of brackish and salt-tolerant plants species to more freshwater oriented species. Sagittaria lancifolia, a freshwater dominant wetland species, may replace salt-tolerant species as salinity regimes are alter...

The occurrence of microplastic (MP) pollution in consumer seafood is an increasingly studied and worrying circumstance. Microplastics have been found to negatively impact marine life that ingests them and filter feeding organisms and detritivores are particularly vulnerable. Compounding this, many o...

Sea level rise poses a great threat to coastal areas and our way of life. As flooding increases in frequency and intensity across the country, vulnerable populations become a target to its impacts. Hawaii, the Carolinas, and the Northern Gulf coasts are among the regions experiencing significant con...

The Underwater Magnetic Release (UMR) System is a device developed by Jackson State University research team that can be programmed to release a float at a future point in time, which can be from a minute to many months. Although this device can work in all environments, it was designed primarily fo...

Mobile Baykeeper has worked for years alongside numerous partners to combat litter in the Mobile Bay Watershed. Because of the diffuse source of the threat, the role that so many people play, and the magnitude of the issue it is extremely difficult to address the issue with cleanups, and structural ...

Mobile, apex predators are commonly assumed to stabilize food webs through trophic coupling across spatially distinct habitats. The assumption that trophic coupling is common remains largely untested, despite evidence that individual behaviors of these predators might limit trophic coupling. We used...

An increased number of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) with skin lesions indicative of freshwater exposure stranded in Alabama during Spring 2020. Little is known about the salinity threshold and length of exposure required for lesions to appear. Grossly, these lesions present acutely as co...

Together with the City of Bayou La Batre, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Mobile County, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The Nature Conservancy implemented a large scale restoration project committed to protecting and preserving the coastal community of B...

Tag Alabama is a partnership between CCA Alabama, the University of South Alabama Department of Marine Sciences, and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Tag Alabama gives CCA Members the opportunity to participate in angler-based Atlantic Tarpon, Red Drum, and Speckled Trout research in coastal Alabama and ...

Commercial shrimpers in the Mississippi Sound frequently encounter marine debris in their nets, resulting in the loss of time and catch, and added repair costs. However, there is no formal reporting procedure in place for reporting these interactions and, thus, little data exists on the types, abund...

The Harmful Algal BloomS Observation System (HABSOS) is a web based data collection and distribution system for harmful algal bloom (HAB) information in the Gulf of Mexico, operated by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). The goal of HABSOS is to provide environmental mana...

Forested floodplains are a mosaic of periodically flooded aquatic habitats with variable levels of connectivity. While there is a clear link between riparian forests and freshwater organisms, floodplain forests are seldom investigated due to difficulties in sampling structurally complex and periodic...

Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) management has been a topic of much scientific debate and intensive public scrutiny. In response to political, public, and management desires for more robust data on Red Snapper populations, a Gulf-wide initiative commonly referred to as the “Great...

Project Oyster Pensacola is a partnership between the Bream Fishermen Association (BFA), a volunteer monitoring and citizen engagement organization, and the Pensacola Bay Oyster Company. Project goals were to engage citizens to learn about water quality and how oysters improve water quality, as well...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Trash-Free Waters program (TFW) develops tools and strategies to reduce sources of land-based litter (primarily single-use disposables) ending up in our waterways. To create more uniform data collection methods, TFW developed the Escaped Trash Assessment...

Marine debris constitutes as any persistent solid material that is manufactured or processed and, directly or indirectly, disposed of or abandoned in the marine environment. The presence of marine debris has been shown to have significant environmental and economic impacts. Unfortunately, the quanti...

In this work, we demonstrate a suite of conservation tools for conservation prioritization and visualization that enables integration of 1) openly available peer-reviewed data from federal and state agencies, 2) the priorities and values identified in local and regional plans with those identified b...

The Mississippi Based RESTORE Act Center of Excellence (MBRACE) was designated as Mississippi’s Center of Excellence in September 2016. MBRACE is a consortium of Mississippi’s four research universities (Jackson State University [JSU], Mississippi State University [MSU], University of Mississipp...

Shallow coastal sediments and their burrowing invertebrate (infauna) communities are important for nutrient cycling and carbon storage. In the northern Gulf of Mexico, frequent storms disturb infauna and resuspend sediments. Re-consolidation of sediments following a storm impacts infaunal habitat su...

Copepods are considered the best initial live food item for the feeding of many marine fish. However, the culture of copepods on a large scale has been problematic due to the high variability of productivity of cultures and the relatively low density that can be applied in culture. Understanding the...

The Watershed Game is a decade-old proven interactive tool for educating audiences about relationships between land use and water quality in streams, lakes, and large rivers. Existing in both local leader (policymakers, community leaders) and classroom (student) versions, the game allows players to ...

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, large-scale breakwater projects have been constructed to restore and conserve marshes across the northern Gulf of Mexico. These breakwater projects are often termed living shorelines due to the perceived increase in secondary productivity around the br...

This study aims at evaluating the effects of wetlands on downstream flow, nitrate, organic nitrogen, and phosphate loading in the Fish River watershed (FRW), located in Baldwin County, coastal Alabama. The FRW drains to the Weeks Bay and represents approximately 75% of the freshwater inputs of this ...

Microplastics are an increasing environmental hazard with potential negative implications for global health. Defined as plastic 5 mm or less in size, microplastics commonly result from fragmentation of larger anthropogenic items. The presence of microplastics in residential water supplies intended f...

Vessel strikes are one of the leading causes of human-related mortality for large whales. In the Gulf of Mexico, there is a high volume of vessel traffic from commercial shipping, fishing, recreation, oil and gas, and military vessels. This puts the sperm whale and the Gulf of Mexico Bryde's whale, ...