CURRENTS - Spring 2023

When Caine O’Rear, Mobile Baykeeper’s Communications Director and Editor of this publication, and I had our first weekly one-on-one meeting, I realized a was dealing with someone who is thoughtful and succinct. During that meeting he said something along the lines of, “this social media, click-bait thing is antithetical to my existence.” Although that is not something you expect to hear from the person in charge of your communications in 2022, I was impressed.

Caine and I began planning a way to tell stories about the waters of Coastal Alabama straight from the mouths of Coastal Alabamians. Stories that connected with all kinds of people. From the Bayou to the Upper Delta, from inner-city Mobile to rural Baldwin County. This magazine is a result of our conversations.

As usual, I did little to make CURRENTS a reality. Caine is a talented and experienced writer. Rather than use my subpar writing to explain, I have pulled an excerpt from Caine’s cover letter to his resume when he applied for his current role:

I was born for this job.

I grew up in Mobile and spent my summers in Point Clear, where I learned to ski, jump off of Middle Bay Light, and spear flounder like some character out of Lord of the Rings. It was an idyllic childhood, and it still means something to me. These days, I spend more time in Soldier Creek, a Perdido Bay tributary, where I fish, kayak and swim (but only if Mobile Baykeeper tells me bacteria levels are low).

I care deeply about the health of our land and waterways. As a society, we are just beginning to learn how deeply connected we are to our environment. Shakespeare recognized as much when he said “we are nature too.” Since its inception, Mobile Baykeeper has emerged as the leading environmental advocacy group for the watery part of our little world, and for this, the organization should be commended.

I have spent the bulk of my professional career in journalism. I have worked for weeklies, dailies, and bimonthly magazines. I have covered sports, local government, state elections, Wall Street, and more. I also interned at the Press-Register in 2008 and have a good grasp of how the Mobile media market works.

From 2009 through the end of 2019, I worked as the editor in chief of American Songwriter magazine, a national publication that is headquartered in Nashville. I made the decision to leave the magazine when new ownership came aboard in late 2019 and turned the publication into a more click-bait affair. It was a great ten years while it lasted, though.

Thank you for considering me for this opportunity. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly,

Caine O’Rear

As you read, members of Mobile Baykeeper are getting a treat in this magazine. Those of you who care deeply about the health of our waterways will find yourself in its contents, learn new things, and have a tool to share your passion with others.

CURRENTS is an experiment. Without the support and action of our members, this publication will have a short life. Our intent is to have these stories become a fixture in our community and shape our culture. We await your feedback and stories about the Bay.

- William Strickland, Executive Director

ADMIRAL SHELLFISH COMPANY

For our maiden issue’s cover story we traveled to Admiral Shellfish Company in Fort Morgan, Alabama. Joining us on the voyage was photographer Alex Timoney, who is originally from Toulouse, France and now lives in Spanish Fort with her family. Pictured on the cover is farm manager Joe Ingraham, whom you can find every weekday working the farm.

EDITOR:

ART DIRECTOR:

BRAND DIRECTOR:

COPY-EDITOR:

CONTRIBUTING

WRITERS:

CAINE O’REAR

COURTNEY SPENCER

MARIANNE MICHALLET GORDON

WESLEY WYATT

EDWARD DENTON, JADE MARTIN, EMILIA MILLING, WILLIAM STRICKLAND, JOSH TOLBERT, HANLON WALSH, SAM WILKES

FOR ALL INQUIRIES:

Please contact Mobile Baykeeper at 251-433-4229, or e-mail Caine O’Rear at corear@mobilebaykeeper.org.

WWW.MOBILEBAYKEEPER.ORG

CONTRIBUTING

PHOTOGRAPHER:

ALEX TIMONEY

Causeway Chronicles

TALES FROM A STORIED PARKWAY

by CAINE O’REAR

Carl Grady poses with a blue crab along the Causeway. Photos by Caine O’Rear

FinnellForrest has been fishing off the Causeway in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta for nearly a decade. His dad, who gave up fishing years ago, started taking him here when he was a kid.

At this little spot on the Blakeley River, not much more than spitting distance from the Causeway, Forrest and his buddy David Stallworth angle for largemouth bass, brim, crappie, redfish, and speckled trout. But no black drum — they let that go. “Too many worms in them,” he says.

Finnell likes fishing in the spring and fall best. He watches the tidal calendar and prefers fishing this locale to a falling tide. “The Blakeley is a pretty spot,” he says. “I get in my boat sometime and go up the river a bit. It’s a 17-foot center console called a Bayhawk. It’s my first boat.”

On most days, Finnell uses a spinning rod with a J-hook and cork, with about three to four feet between bobber and hook. “[These freshwater fish] don’t eat down, they eat up,” he says. “They’re an ambush fish so they have to look up at their prey and eat them.” Today he and David are fishing with shiners and live shrimp they picked up at the bait shop just down the road, “Hooked By The Bay,” the last of its kind on the Causeway.

After a day on the water, Finnell cleans his haul at home and fries them up, using a mixture of cornmeal and wheat flour, and that seems to work pretty well, he says. Pan-fried mostly. Sometimes a deep fry. Baked occasionally.

Asked what he likes most about fishing the Delta, he says it’s “the relaxation, the wildlife. It’s peace of mind.”

But even among the scenic splendor, threats loom. From the patio of the Bluegill Restaurant, where I find myself later — just a hop, skip and a jump from Finnell’s fishing spot — you cannot see the candy-striped smokestacks of Plant Barry rising twenty miles away in north Mobile County, at the site of Alabama Power’s 600-acre coal-ash pond. The back-end of the restaurant, which sits on the eastern portion of The Causeway in Spanish Fort, looks out over Pass Picada channel — a veritable honey-hole for redfish, speckled trout, and largemouth bass— before flowing into Chacaloochee Bay. Families stand along the rickety dock

after dining and kids angle for privileged glimpses of alligators loitering idly for scraps.

Standing along the Pass in the magic hour, among the cattails and cordgrass, hyacinth and lotus blooms, it’s easy to forget the elephant that looms northward in the Delta. Before the 2008 coal-ash spill in Kingston, Tenn. — a spill that resulted in nearly $3 billion in damages, and the deaths of cleanup workers — the issue of coal ash was not part of the public imagination. Over the past seven years, due to the work of Mobile Baykeeper and others, coal ash is now very much on the minds of Coastal Alabamians. And there are other threats you’d soon as well forget, as you soak up the Amazonian wonder: things like the BP oil spill, the dangers posed by dredging, and the increased stormwater runoff brought on by rapid development.

In the lower reaches of the Delta, where it traverses the Causeway and flows into Mobile Bay, there are no fish consumption advisories issued by the Alabama Public Health Department. But northward along the Mobile River, at the Cold Creek location, the state advises that no species of fish be consumed due to mercury contamination. At David Lake, also on the Mobile River, advisories are issued for largemouth bass and black crappie. It’s worth noting that if a location or species does not have an advisory, it means there is not enough data on that site, not that it is automatically safe to consume fish from there. So it stands to reason that a largemouth bass, or black crappie, or any freshwater fish coming from upriver and traveling to the lower Delta, is likely at risk for contamination. For subsistence fisherman who rely on those fish to feed their families, that’s not good news.

It’s been said that if you don’t take the Causeway the devil will get you. And while I’ve never regarded the Bayway as the Highway To Hell, there is some truth in the statement. Anyone who’s been stuck in gridlocked traffic on the Bayway when nature calls knows exactly what I’m talking about.

To me, the Causeway is a relic of an older Mobile, and it bears the vestiges of local charm. In addition to being home to some of the region’s best eateries, it is also the site of two public parks (Five Rivers Delta and Meaher State Park) that are first-rate. It’s the part of

“ THIS IS MY HOME AND I WOULDN’T TRADE IT FOR NO WORLD.”

GEORGE BOLDEN

Mobile that connects so many to the Delta and Bay on a daily basis. For some, it’s the only chance to glimpse “America’s Amazon,” and yet the view alone is enough to spellbind.

Constructed in 1926, The Causeway — officially known as Battleship Parkway — served for decades as the only artery connecting Mobile to Baldwin County by road. Today, this stretch of highway operates as a psychic demarcation point, a place where you can see the majesty of a byzantine watershed — one dominated by freshwater rivers, sloughs, and creeks — as it empties into Mobile Bay, sluicing through the embankment as a brackish mix.

On any given day, you can find a host of fisherman gathered along its shores and concrete shoulders. Carl Grady is often one of them. When he’s off work and the rain isn’t coming down, Grady can usually be found kicking back along the roadside and fishing with his wife Lillian. This is true year-round, but especially so in March, when the redfish really start coming in.

A native of central California who now lives in Chickasaw, Carl has been fishing the Bay side of the Causeway for eight years. He usually sets up on the Mobile portion of the highway, a few hundred yards from the Spanish Fort line. Most days he’s aiming for

redfish, though today’s catch has yielded a bucket of blue crabs and a nice black drum. At this spot, he fishes with dead shrimp and uses J-hooks on a spinner with no cork. The crabs he hooks with cut-up croaker.

Carl checks the tide charts often. He says he generally has better luck with the reds on the Causeway when the tide’s coming in. With black drum, it seems to be the opposite.

Tonight he says they’ll fry up their catch with a little Cajun seasoning and make fish tacos.

While Carl and his wife do a good bit of surf-fishing in Orange Beach, this is the couple’s go-to spot, just a short jaunt from Chickasaw by interstate. It’s a good life, but the fishing ain’t what it used to be.

“What we hate about this place is that people trash it,” Carl says. “They need a dumpster [out here] where people can put their garbage. We bring a trash bag with us and pick it up while we’re here … and for a while we didn’t even want to come down here it was so trashy … But the thing is now, with the colder weather, people don’t want to come out. It’s more in the spring and summertime … they just don’t even care.

Carl Grady shows off a black drum.

“But really, the fishing used to be a lot better,” Carl continues. “[Too many people now] keep undersized fish, and that makes it where the babies can’t grow. These days it’s just hit and miss. When we used to come here, even up to about three or four years ago, we were landing just big freaking redfish.”

George Bolden remembers coming down to the Causeway in the late 1950s, as a stripling of eight or nine. His family would spend the day hauling in crabs by the dozen with dip nets, a somewhat lost art that involves wading out into the water and scooping up crabs by hand. They’d pick some plums for dessert in a nearby orchard, and a feast would ensue that evening.

Now in his mid-seventies and retired from Amtrak, George has spent a lifetime on Mobile Bay, with the exception of a brief stint working up in North Carolina. He’s got a 15-foot aluminum skiff he uses to catch white trout in Deer River, off the Industrial Canal, and what he calls “brown mullet,” or Southern Kingfish, a species of Whiting, off of Daphne’s Eastern Shore.

Today he’s shore-fishing off the Causeway. It’s a warm mid-morning in early February, and he’s sheltered from the sun by the Bayway ramp that hangs overhead. This isn’t his usual spot, but today he’s

giving it a try. He’s using scented bait and frozen shrimp, but he hasn’t had much luck. “If you don’t catch anything, it’s just good to be on the water, and I love the peace of mind,” he says. “You don’t have to think about the honeydews at home and all you have to do.”

George echoes the sentiments of fellow angler Carl Grady, and says the fishing, indeed, ain’t what it used to be. There is one watershed moment, he says, where the tide really turned. “The fishing used to be plentiful. Since that oil spill, it just hasn’t been the same, big difference.”

George’s life is colored by his childhood memories of Mobile Bay, a watery idyll that you long for as you listen to his stories, but one that seems like ancient history. Still, George recognizes the need to protect what we have left, and restore what we can. “We gotta keep this place clean,” he says. “This is my home and I wouldn’t trade it for no world.”

George Bolden.

Community Spotlight

A TALK WITH NATURALIST AND ECO-TOUR GUIDE JIMBO MEADOR

by EMILIA MILLING

Ispent my childhood summers on Mobile Bay in the early 2000s. One of my most vivid memories of that time is of seeing a man paddle-boarding toward the Grand Hotel at sunrise every morning with a little dog perched on the front of his craft. After watching him for some time, I finally asked my dad one morning if he knew who the man was. He responded that it was Mr. Meador, “a cool dude.”

In his career, Jimbo Meador has operated commercial fishing boats, tug boats, and shrimp boats. He currently runs “Jimbo’s Delta Excursions,” which are two-hour eco-tours in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta.

Meador has always made his living on the water, and it is his passion for the natural wonder of Mobile Bay and the Delta that has inspired him to do so. He is a certified Master Naturalist who is committed to sharing his knowledge of the beauty and biodiversity that exists in our own backyard, which he relates in an always colorful and scintillating manner.

We chatted with Meador about his life on Mobile Bay and in the Delta, and the grave challenges our watershed now faces.

I read that that you grew up in Spring Hill in Mobile and spent your summers in Point Clear?

Yeah, I grew up in Spring Hill when it was actually country and we moved over the Bay for the summer. In fact, we had a big lot of property in Spring Hill. We had horses and we had a milk cow and chickens and a garden. And in the summer, we moved everything over the Bay, including the milk cow and the chickens. So, it was a different world back then.

Spring Hill was a different world, too. Where Municipal Park is now, the lake there, that used to be marsh. Where South Alabama and Municipal Park is — that was all swamp and woods. In fact, I had a trap line out there when I was a kid. I actually sold furs. The only thing that shared the swamp with me were the whiskey-stillers.

Did you always know that you wanted to live on the Bay? Did you ever consider living anywhere else?

No. The only time I lived anywhere else was when I was with Ryan Stevedoring Company. When I got married, I was running a tug boat, so I went to work for Ryan Stevedoring so that I could be home more and still near the water. I’ve made a living on or around the water my entire life. So that’s the reason it’s so important to me. Because the water’s been good to me and I want to be good to the water. But we’re struggling with that part.

But yeah, they promoted me to ship superintendent and I moved to North Carolina for two years. We had a contract loading all the ammunition going to Vietnam on ships. And then I moved back to Mobile and when I did, I decided to move to Baldwin County

full-time. There weren’t that many people over there then living full-time. Most were summer residents. So, there were a few of us. There were three or four of us who lived on the water year-round and we would celebrate the day after Labor Day because that’s when everybody went home. We would have a party celebrating everybody leaving. You would have the whole Bay to yourself all winter. And this time of year, when you went into Fairhope, you might see, oh, ten or fifteen cars. Now you can’t even find a place to park. So, everything has changed. I am really blessed to have been born when I was born. I just worry about my kids and my grandkids, you know?

That being said, what specifc changes have you seen to Mobile Bay and the Delta in your lifetime?

The biggest one is in the Bay; you know, it’s always muddy now. We [once] had seagrasses all along the Eastern Shore. [The seagrasses] hold the sediment. So, when it gets rough, it holds the sediment which doesn’t get all stirred up in the water column. And that is what makes things muddy. We’ve lost all our seagrasses.

This time of year, the water gets pretty clear. But if you get a southwest wind, in five minutes, it’s going to look like chocolate. So, there’s no seagrass and that is really important. You know, you can’t have grass without sunlight.

I use the example of: if you put a tarp over the grass in your yard … without any sunlight, how long is [your grass] going to live without photosynthesis? It’s not going to live. You pick your tarp up, you can plant more grass, but when you put your tarp back down, no grass is going to grow.

And so muddy water is the same thing as that tarp … so, you can’t have clear water without grass and you can’t have grass without clear water. So, how are you going to fix that? We’ve gotten to the point where, you know, when it used to rain, the rain was absorbed back through the soil and back into the atmosphere. And now, we’ve had so many roads and highways, parking lots, houses, roofs, driveways, that there’s very little soil left to absorb that water. And when it rains on an impervious surface like a roof or a parking lot or a highway, it runs off, and it doesn’t get absorbed. And all that runoff goes into our tributaries and into our rivers and eventually into our Bay. All that runoff is carrying silt in it, which muddies the water. And it is also carrying nitrogen and phosphorus, and other pollutants. And the nitrogen and phosphorus are a fertilizer, which is one of the reasons we’re having all these algae blooms and red tides and fish kills and stuff like that. The algae is overfertilized and you have these algae blooms that consume all the oxygen in the water. Especially when they die. And not only do they take the oxygen out of the water, they get on fish’s gills … and they can’t breathe what little oxygen there is, because that is how fish breathe.

That’s where the jubilees come in, right?

No, jubilees are naturally occurring. That’s where people have a huge misunderstanding. They think an algae bloom, which is a red tide, is natural. We’re causing that. But a natural jubilee is caused by decaying matter that is in the bottom out in the Bay. It causes low dissolved oxygen in the water. And you’ve got to have certain conditions to have a jubilee. Growing up, we never missed a jubilee

because we knew what conditions there had to be for there to be a jubilee. And if the conditions were right, we stayed out all night looking for one. Back then the water was clear; you could see the bottom and you could go floundering every night. If it was calm, you could see the bottom and go gig [or spear] flounders, you know. Now you can’t even see the bottom; there’s no sense in going floundering. [Back then] we sold the flounders that we gigged to old Mister Stern’s fish market out in Fairhope. We didn’t holler jubilee or anything. We were out gigging flounders really for the market.

I watched the “America’s Amazon” documentary earlier where you talked about the jubilees. Yeah, they asked me about it, but I think it was a 60 Minutes thing. And they had limited time, so they didn’t really get to the point where I described the difference between an algae bloom and a jubilee. But I never saw any fish die in a jubilee, unless somebody gigged the flounder or scooped up crabs or whatever. I never saw any dead fish in a jubilee. But in an algae bloom, you see dead fish. A jubilee [concerns] fish that live on the bottom, because there is no oxygen on the bottom and there is a layer of oxygen on the surface; it goes straight to the beach. So, a flounder doesn’t have any swim bladder [a gaseous organ in some fish that helps them control their buoyancy] like a lot of fish. They have to get up into that level of water that has oxygen. So, they follow it to the beach where they can just lay there. It is the same thing with crabs and shrimp and eels and catfish and stingrays and everything that lives on the bottom. But when you have an algae bloom, you see other fish because the whole water column is low in dissolved oxygen. So, there is no oxygen in the whole water column, and not just on the bottom. Do you understand what I am saying?

Yes sir.

So, that’s a huge difference between a jubilee and an algae bloom, a red tide, a brown tide, whatever you want to call it. Those are actually caused by nitrogen and phosphorus runoff. Everybody fertilizes their yards too much. Especially golf courses and all that runs off. And not just here. Places up north and states north of Alabama drain into our tributaries. They’re contributing to all of that. So, we got a huge problem and how are we going to solve it? You know, we really need to make sure that everybody has buffer zones. A buffer zone for runoff before it runs off into the tributaries.

Also, we need to have holding ponds or some area where stuff can settle before it goes back into our tributaries. Our Delta is one of the reasons it’s really, really important. It’s like a giant kidney — I try to explain things pretty simple — because it absorbs all the nitrogen and phosphorus, which is fertilizer. All the vegetation in the Delta, it utilizes it before it gets into the Bay. So, it’s a filter.

The Delta is really important as a filter. It also accumulates a lot of silt that’s running down the rivers. So, without the Delta, we would have a lot more serious problems than we got now. And we got a serious problem now. The seagrasses and clear water are kind of like the chicken and the egg. You know, you can’t have one without the other. Does that make sense?

Yes sir. That was a really interesting analogy with the kidney and the Delta. Yeah, I mean it’s really simple. You know, I’ve talked to scientists all over and the scientists can be hard for me to understand. But I feel like when you’re talking to the general public, and especially children, the simpler you can make it, the better it is for them to understand.

What do you think about the state of environmental awareness in the Mobile region right now?

Well, what do you mean?

I mean, for example, I have grown up on Mobile Bay my whole life and had no idea about the diferences between a jubilee and an algae bloom. Do you think people understand that dire point that we are approaching and the actions that need to be taken to better the situation? No, I don’t, especially over here because all these people that are moving here, they ain’t got any idea what a paradise we used to have. They have no conception of what Mobile Bay used to be like. And you know, it is a dying breed that remembers what it used to be like. And so, it’s hard to fathom for some people, but I used to spearfish in Mobile Bay. I mean it was that clear. I used to put on a mask and snorkel and fins and I used to chop barnacles off of the pilings and spear sheepshead and even flounder and stuff And now … why would you even want a mask and snorkel and fins in Mobile Bay? You couldn’t even see anything. So, it’s a really, really sad situation. And you know, more power to somebody that can reverse it, but I’m afraid that it may have gotten to the point where it will be really hard to reverse.

Like I said, you’ve got to have some clear water first. I mean that grass beds were once thick all along here and we’d go soft shelling at night and go floundering any night when it was calm. Now you can’t do any of that anymore. And the grass beds are very important nursery grounds for all of our seafood, our shrimp, our crabs, our fish, and everything depends on them to grow up in a juvenile state.

I tell people how important the Delta is. Let’s say one white shrimp lays clean 500,000 million eggs. And the reason they lay so many eggs is they have to lay them in water with the right amount of salinity, so they have to lay them in the Gulf — Gulf shrimp. That’s where it starts — out there. As the eggs mature, they drift into the currents, and a big percentage of them get eaten or don’t make it. But then they make it all the way up into the Delta. They’re now in their nursery ground, where they have plenty of grass and plenty of protection, and that’s where they grow up. And as they grow up, they migrate to the Gulf and the whole cycle starts again. If we destroy the Delta, then we’re not going to have any nursery grounds and we’ve already destroyed the nursery grounds in Mobile Bay. So, if we want seafood, we need to take care of the Delta.

It’s the same thing with fish and crabs. A female crab lays between 1 million and 2 million eggs in the Gulf. But they have to make it all the way into the Delta to grow up — or into Mobile Bay

“ ALL THESE PEOPLE THAT ARE MOVING HERE, THEY AIN’T GOT ANY IDEA WHAT A PARADISE WE USED TO HAVE. THEY HAVE NO CONCEPTION OF WHAT MOBILE BAY USED TO BE LIKE.”

— and that’s the reason grass beds are so important. The crabs need a place to hide and grow up. Everything wants to eat a shrimp and a crab, so they need protection. It’s just like us; I mean we might as well destroy the maternity wards, cause that’s where everything grows up. It’s real simple. And we’re losing all that and we’ve lost a huge percentage of it, and we know why we’ve lost it. But the big question is: what are we going to do about it? Other than buffer zones around our tributaries and some way to prevent all the nitrogen and phosphorus and other pollutants from running into our river, and all the silt and dirt that goes into our rivers.

So, what do you see as the future of Mobile Bay?

Pretty sunsets.

Ha ha. Good answer.

Yeah, and you know we wouldn’t have pretty sunsets without pollution in the air.

That is a good point.

Yeah, I just feel blessed to be born when I was so I have been able to enjoy and see all that. It is really, really sad that we have stolen that from the next generations.

I have one more question for you. What is your favorite all-time memory of the Bay or Delta?

Wow. There’s so many of them. They’re all favorites. Any time I can spend on Mobile Bay and the Delta. In the Delta, back in the ’50s, ducks would blacken the sky; I was a big duck hunter and so I had some of the most fabulous duck hunts you can imagine growing up as a kid. And Mobile Bay, the water was clear and beautiful. You know you don’t see as many people swimming as you used to because a lot of people are really afraid to get in there. Not only because it’s muddy and filthy, but you got Vibrio [a flesh-eating bacteria sometimes present in brackish water]. You know if you got a cut on you, you’ve got a good chance of losing an arm or a leg or maybe even your life. So, we had a great time growing up on the Bay swimming and skiing, you know, enjoying the clear water. So, it’s sad that it’s gone.

Yes sir. Defnitely.

But I’ve got so many memories that are favorites, it would be hard to pick out just one. It’s too bad that we don’t have what we did have. I hope that you’ll work on figuring out a way to get it back.

That is the goal.

This article originally appeared on MobileBaykeeper.org in 2021.

Lessons Of The Lagoon

A FORCED ENTRY INTO FISHING

How my grandfather turned me away from fishing, but taught me to love Little Lagoon.

by HANLON WALSH

I’venever been much of a fisherman. In fact, I enjoy just about everything on the water except fishing.

Swimming? The only way to cool off on a hot summer day. Paddling? I know all the secret spots. Boat rides? I’m your co-captain. Bushwhackers and beer? Let’s have a Sunday Funday. Fishing? It’s complicated.

Despite having many opportunities to love fishing as a child during summers spent growing up on Little Lagoon, I never got hooked. You could say my entry into fishing was, well, a bit forced.

A Lagoon Fishing Legend

My late grandfather, Rock O’Neill (also known as “Ricky”), was a Lagoon fishing extraordinaire. He fished twice a day for several hours and knew every obscure fishing hole across the Lagoon where you could catch the best redfish and speckled trout.

He even caught one of the largest speckled trout in Little Lagoon to date, coming in at a hefty 11.8 pounds. Today, this prized fish proudly hangs on our living room wall at the Lagoon as a reminder of Ricky’s fishing prowess.

Ricky had many admirable traits, but patience wasn’t at the top of the list. If you were one of the lucky (or not so lucky) novices to score a fishing invitation aboard his luxurious 10-foot skiff, you had better come prepared to get to work. When it came to fishing, it was Ricky’s way or the highway. Little Lagoon was his home turf, and in Ricky’s boat, there was room for only one captain.

Teach A Man To Fish

Ricky embraced the “teach-a-man-to-fish” mentality by passing down his love for fishing to younger generations in our family. So much that he put all eight of his grandsons through his own “survival-of-the-fittest” style fishing boot camp. As the second oldest grandson, I became the first cousin casualty of Ricky’s boot camp.

The first (and last) day of my short-lived fishing career was memorable. Without warning, Ricky yanked me out of bed at the crack

of dawn with an abrupt morning greeting and ushered me outside to his boat. “Wake up O’Possum … we’re goin’ fishin’,” he said in his gruff Southern voice. (I’ll save the O’Possum nickname backstory for another time.)

There I was, a timid seven year old slightly terrified of my grandfather, standing shirtless in my boxers about to go fishing for the first time. Fortunately, my older brother Richard had already taken a liking to fishing and bore the brunt of Ricky’s constant instructions that morning once we set out on my maiden fishing voyage.

I don’t remember vivid details on the boat besides being bored to tears, feeling my back getting redder by the minute, and getting bossed around by Ricky. Several hours later, we returned home fried and fishless. It was then I decided that would be the end of my short-lived fishing career.

Part of me likes to think I was the “rebel” who paved the way for some of my younger cousins who also weren’t destined to be fishermen. The other part of me wonders if I would have enjoyed fishing early on with perhaps a more gradual introduction.

Fortunately, Richard caught the fishing bug and became Ricky’s right-hand fishing mate for the next 20-plus years. This was a crucial buffer because that meant Ricky eventually quit pestering me to go with him every time.

The Ways Of The Lagoon

While they were fishing several hours each day, I found other ways to enjoy the Lagoon. I built sandcastles and “dug holes to China” on the beach; I spent hours at the neighboring creek playing in the sinking sand; I swam out to the platform and back; I played Marco Polo with my cousins and raced them up and down the neighbors’ wharves; I collected hermit crabs on the beach and watched them slowly inch back into the water. One adventure after the next, my earliest memories of the water were ignited at the Lagoon.

You might say Ricky was a non-traditional environmentalist. It drove him crazy whenever anyone in our family stayed inside too long at the Lagoon. If he caught you watching TV on the couch dur-

“ WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, I DIDN’T FULLY APPRECIATE THE EFFORT RICKY MADE TO BUILD A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH ME AND EXPOSE ME TO THE OUTDOORS.”

ing the middle of the day, he never shied away from not-so-politely telling you to get outside. Once it was clear that fishing wasn’t in my future, Ricky made it his mission to expose me to the Lagoon’s wonders through other outlets.

He took me on boat rides and taught me about the history, flora, and fauna of the area. One of our notable pit stops involved searching for alligators at Gator Lake and walking around the trails at Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge on the west end of the Lagoon. He also introduced me to the quiet stretch of public beach access at Mobile Street (shh … don’t tell). Today, I still enjoy both of these activities to recharge outside of family time at the Lagoon.

Ricky taught me all about coastal birds, especially his love for the Great Blue Heron. Over time, he built a special relationship with a certain heron who he named “Mr. Richard.” After each fishing outing, Ricky cut up the fish he wasn’t going to eat and left it out on the wharf for Mr. Richard.

Like clockwork, Mr. Richard swooped in for a hearty snack every time. Eventually he came to rely on Ricky’s daily fish portions and greeted him on our wharf after every fishing trip. Today, our family fishermen still carry on this unique tradition with Mr. Richard.

An Unlikely Victory

Over the years, I became my own version of an outdoorsman and discovered a passion for hiking, camping, and kayaking. One of my proudest Lagoon moments with Ricky came during my early twenties shortly after I bought a kayak and became an avid paddler.

It was a late summer weekend in August when Ricky’s boat motor stopped working. Uh oh, we thought. Life stopped at the Lagoon when Ricky’s motor broke down. Fishing was his escape, and when that was no longer an option, he could get anxious or irritable quickly.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Without Richard there as a buffer that weekend or a functioning motor to keep Ricky occupied, I was now his main project.

So, Ricky got creative and asked If I wanted to take him on a canoe fishing excursion. After years of standing firm on the fishing sidelines, I jumped at the opportunity. This time, I was the captain steering the ship and Ricky was my passenger. My how the tables had turned.

We pulled out the rusted canoe from under the house and dragged it down to the water. Soon we began weaving around neighbors’ wharves until Ricky found the perfect fishing spot. Part of me was nervous about steering him properly, and the other part of me was more nervous about flipping the flimsy canoe. Here goes nothing.

To my great surprise, we were only a few wharves away when Ricky reeled in a massive speckled trout. Soon after, he had a big smile on his face, his mood lightened, and he thanked me for being his canoe captain. I was happy to have played a small part in this unexpected canoe fishing victory.

Ricky’s Lagoon Legacy

In July 2019, Ricky passed away at age 85. Today, the Lagoon continues to serve as a gathering place for our family near and far. Since I don’t currently live in Mobile, I cherish our weeks spent at the Lagoon now even more than I did when I was younger.

While Ricky may not be with us in person anymore, his spirit and legacy live on. Every fish we catch; every boat ride we take; every walk to the creek; every swim to the platform; every stroke we paddle; every broken boat motor; we’ll always think of Ricky. When we see Mr. Richard soar above the trees and swoop down to collect his fish, deep down we know it’s Ricky looking after us.

When I was younger, I didn’t fully appreciate the effort Ricky made to build a close relationship with me and expose me to the outdoors. Twenty-five years later from the day I quit fishing boot camp, I still have yet to discover a passion for fishing. And maybe I never will. But I’ll always have Ricky to thank for teaching me how to love the Lagoon.

The shores of Little Lagoon. Photo by Hanlon Walsh

Rocky “Ricky” O’Neill. Photo courtesy of the author

Meet Me At The Jubilee

APPRECIATING OUR BELOVED ANOMALY

by SAM WILKES

Photo by Aaron O. Tesney, Mobile Press-Register. 1959.

Photos are from the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Donated by Alabama Media Group.

The term “jubilee” evokes a different meaning to the people around Mobile Bay than the rest of the world. We’re not thinking of anniversaries or liberation — or even cherry dessert. We’re thinking of the Bay. Along with Tokyo Bay in Japan, Mobile Bay is the only place on earth where this phenomenon is documented. A natural event caused by the up-welling of oxygen-poor waters compelling certain creatures ashore. Yet, such an enigmatic happening cannot be summarized so simply. Jubilees may arise in the summer before sunrise, while some occur before midnight in the fall. One jubilee may consist of only flounder, while another may involve crabs or shrimp. Some occur in randomly concentrated areas along the Eastern Shore, while others may affect a fifteen-mile expanse from Daphne to the southern end of County Road 1.

Jubilees are not to be confused with fish kills. These are not floating carcasses. These animals are alive, yet often lethargic and almost indifferent to capture. Which is partly why some locals have waited their whole lives to find one. Old photographs of past jubilees line the walls of restaurants along the Causeway and Eastern Shore.

Broadcast television crews have lingered here for weeks trying to queue one up, only to have it happen as their plane touched down in New York. Some residents study the forecasts and stalk the shorelines in the early predawn. While others stumble upon the event with divine luck, as if Atlas tilted the globe ever so slightly, sending the Bay’s bounty into a dazed exodus just for them.

While others listened for the bells.

“When people had screened porches with beds and no air conditioning, it was common for folks to ring a bell alerting a jubilee,” says Neno Ladd of Point Clear. Neno has lived on Mobile Bay, just south of the Grand Hotel, for more than 30 years. As a child her family rented and visited houses along the Bay, but she never witnessed her first jubilee until she actually lived on the Bay. “If you don’t go out and look, you would only know there was a jubilee because the crabs in your traps would be dead. So, you monitor yourself.”

Neno averages three jubilees a year at her Point Clear property. She’s always prepared, equipped with her propane lights, flounder gigs, flashlights, nets,

buckets, and shrimp boots. Neno watches for a “light east wind, no waves breaking at all on the beach, an incoming tide, rain showers, and the Bay water has a distinct jubilee color!” When conditions are right, Neno checks “two or three times during the night for eels, crabs, and flounder swimming on top of the water heading to the beach preceding the jubilee, which typically occurs around 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.” Neno has found that “during a jubilee there are always sting rays and eels. Usually crab and flounders of all sizes. Sometimes shrimp, and a few trout and mullet.” However, she gets frustrated seeing people ignore the size and catch limits for flounder. “If a family gets ten legal flounder it is more than plenty. But it’s not uncommon to see people with tons of undersized.” So, Neno reminds us that even amidst the excitement of a jubilee, the limit and size regulations still apply.

Jeremy Hovater did not know of jubilees until moving to Montrose in 2012. “Our house has a jubilee bell and so do most of our neighbors,” he says. “Our neighbors talk about the times when they all would ring the bells to wake up everyone close by. It would be a community event. Now we seem to be more respectful of our neighbor’s sleep. Not sure if it is a good or bad thing, but the stories I hear sound like the old jubilees were a lot of fun.”

Since moving here, Jeremy has witnessed eight separate jubilees. “I just look out for flashing lights now,” he says. “Before, when the conditions were right, I would get up all hours of the night to walk our pier and look for possible activity. After several failed attempts and being sleep deprived, I realized it was easier to just look to see if there were any flashing lights on the Bay.” Jeremy finds the variety of the catch fascinating. “Just this past year we had multiple jubilees in one week,” he says. “The first one was mostly shrimp and crab with only a few small flounders. The next night we had a jubilee where the beach was covered in flounders and crab of all sizes, but no shrimp. Two days later it was mostly just crab and eel.”

Jeremy loves taking his young son down to the shore with a gig for the flounder, nets for crabs and shrimp, and five-gallon buckets. “Our first jubilee, we had a bucket full of crab. But after realizing they are a lot of work for a little bit of food, we decided to let others

“ JUBILEES ARE NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH FISH KILLS. THESE ARE NOT FLOATING CARCASSES.”

enjoy the crab capturing. The second night we gigged our share of flounder. Fortunately, a gentleman nearby advised us of the limit and size requirements.” Jeremy said he learned that night regular kitchen knives were entirely inadequate for a jubilee bounty.

Like with most aspects of our lives, social media also plays a role with current day jubilee hunters. “There are a couple of Facebook groups that I have joined,” says Ley Curl of Fairhope. Ley is in his mid-thirties and moved to the area in 2018 but has been visiting since childhood. Ley says “jubilees were one of those things you hear about but always wonder if it’s actually true. Once my wife and I moved down here, I started digging into the tales and asking around.”

Ley says the Facebook groups can be a helpful starting point for information. “Jubilee Watch Baldwin County” has about 6,400 members, including old salts, snowbirds, and new transplants. “But most of the pages consist of folks looking to take part in the phenomenon and not as much on how to find them.”

Occasionally you will see a post letting you know conditions may be right in the next few days. So, it can be a good reminder,” Ley acknowledges. “But it’s not like the old days of folks ringing a bell

and calling the neighbors out. The ones who really want to see it have to do the work.”

Ley now watches for a calm day with a slight wind out of the east and “a little rain the day before seems to help.” Ley witnessed five to six jubilees in the summer of 2022, along points from Orange Street Pier down to Mullet Point. “They tend to be localized but I have seen some larger ones that extended down multiple spots on the shore. They have varied from a few crabs and shrimp along the rocks to the first few feet deep being covered up with shrimp, crabs, flounder and catfish. You’ll also get some heavy mullet schools coming through.” Ley says most occurred “early morning before daylight with some lasting into the morning hours. Although when the sun is up, word has usually gotten around and folks start disturbing the waters. When the boat traffic starts, waves will end a jubilee immediately. But if you’re lucky, one will reform.”

All of us that live around Mobile Bay are lucky to have such a natural phenomenon present. The jubilee folklore and experience continues to interest the young and old that journey to our area. Although the bells of yesteryear have quit ringing, this local anomaly remains ever elusive and fascinating.

“ IT’S NOT LIKE THE OLD DAYS OF FOLKS RINGING A BELL AND CALLING THE NEIGHBORS OUT. THE ONES WHO REALLY WANT TO SEE IT HAVE TO DO THE WORK.

— LEY CURL

Photo by Aaron O. Tesney, Mobile Press-Register. 1959.

Photo by Aaron O. Tesney, Mobile Press-Register

Photo by Ford Cook, Mobile Press-Register

Unknown photographer, Mobile Press-Register

The IsBayYour Oyster

HOW ADMIRAL SHELLFISH COMPANY CREATED A WORLD - CLASS OYSTER FARM AT THE MOUTH OF MOBILE BAY

by CAINE O’REAR

Ifyou ask any first-class gourmand where to find the best oysters in the world, they will tell you to look in the claires of France or along the western coast of Ireland. Certainly in the shallow waters around Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or in Wellfleet Harbor, Cape Cod. Somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico? Not a chance.

If they are really savvy, they will tell you about Mali Ston Bay, an oyster utopia on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast where a variety of European flat oyster can be found that is so precious Roman emperors once funded commercial farms there, and still, two millennia later, Austrian emperor Franz Joseph was insisting that his monthly shipments to Vienna come from Mali Ston alone. In Franz Josef’s day, five hundred miles by train would be about the same as shipping overnight on a 747. In logistical terms, halfway around the world.

Such is the love for this strange and wonderful bivalve and the lengths we will go to get them — nowhere is too far to send for the best. So whether you take them by the dozen on the half-shell or fried on a po-boy, with a bottle of France’s sparkliest or with an icy schooner of what made Milwaukee famous, the humble and posh oyster inspires a love that runs deep into the heart of many cultures and culinary traditions.

The Gulf, however, has not enjoyed the same reputation for quality as these other fabled appellations. Even before the concerns brought by the BP oil spill, there was the long-held conception that the Gulf waters are too warm and turbid, and that the coastal beds where our oysters develop their unique flavor profile are not briny enough. So what we always lacked in quality, we made up for in quantity. At least we did until BP, an event that wiped out somewhere between 4 to 8 billion oysters — a loss that has taken the mollusk three generations to replenish. As recently as 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce designated Alabama as one of several Gulf states whose seafood had been greatly endangered.

Hard numbers and the effects of the spill aside,

such conceptions about the Gulf’s fitness for growing world-class oysters are not the whole truth. The key to growing a world-class oyster is not in a body as large as the Gulf or even as small as a single bay. And as bad as the spill was, is, the waters are healing. In beds that may be only as large as a few acres, the perfect conditions can and do exist. If only you know where to look.

I visited the Admiral farm in early December. The morning had brought a low tide. Through the slash pines and saw palmetto at the farm’s approach, which sits just off Fort Morgan Road near the marina, you can already see it. The water is clear; so clear you feel as if you’re glimpsing the sandy bottom through a fish tank.

Nearby, about 300 yards from Fort Morgan, the remnants of the Tecumseh, the Union warship that capsized after striking a mine during the Battle of Mobile Bay, is buried beneath the Bay. The farm works with the state to ensure the site remains undisturbed. Thus the name, Admiral Shellfish Company, replete with its “damn the torpedoes” ethos.

This is Mobile Bay, I have known it my whole life, and while the water is typically less turbid during the winter months, this locale seems by contrast a different waterbody altogether from the caramel hues of the river-fed upper Bay. Here, the diurnal tide ushers in full-strength ocean water, and there is no siltation. On the hottest day of the year, the waters might reach 84 degrees, only slightly warmer than the near 80 degrees seen in Mali Ston.

As a general rule, the perpetually brackish Mobile Bay averages 10 to 20 parts per thousand (PPT) for salinity. Because of the diurnal tide, however, the coveted 20 to 24 PPT salinity level is a near constant at the farm. On the day of my visit the salinity level is at 23. Scarce rain in October and November meant the farm never went below 25 in those months.

So here, at the southern end of the Bay where the Gulf currents, underwater terrain, and surrounding

“ THEY’RE BRINGING THAT SALTIER OYSTER THAT CUSTOMERS CRAVE, AND THE SALINITY LEVELS ARE MATCHING THAT OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, WHICH IS EXTREMELY RARE IN THE GULF.”

SETH TEMPLE, HEAD CHEF AT NEW ORLEANS’ LA CHAT NOIR

geography converge in a swirl of exceptionally clear, highly saline waters, the ideal conditions exist for growing world-class oysters. In waters saturated with just the right concentration of minerals, nutrients, and phytoplankton, amid these conditions there exists some of the best that can be found, anywhere on earth.

Approaching the farm’s shore you are greeted by Joe Ingraham, a bearded oysterman and great storyteller. He looks like “a pirate, 200 years too late,” as Jimmy Buffett might put it. The farm stretches out into the bay for 1,400 feet, and you can see black buoys rectangling in the sea. There are nearly 700,000 oysters growing in this space. It’s shallow and the Admiral team rarely has to use boats. It’s mostly waders when they’re out checking the cages.

Ingraham is on the farm every weekday. When you visit Admiral, and observe Joe and co-owner Anthony Ricciardone working the farm, you quickly learn this is not a project for dilettantes. Or the faint-hearted.

Ingraham is explaining the lay of the land to our photographer.

“When the cage is suspended, that’s exactly where they sit — in that top two feet,” Ingraham says. “But that also gives them protection from would-be predators.”

Ingraham and his team are constantly working with the oysters, shaking and handling and fine-tuning the bags. This is partly an effort to keep the “lip” off the shell, which is a form of curation that allows for better presentation. They also take the oysters out of the bag and let them air-dry, which helps kill off things like algae.

“In terms of a handcrafted product, we’re literally shaping the cup of the oyster. Our chefs want consistency, and they want the same branded product every day,” says Ricciardone. “With these cups, it looks like the meat is exploding out of the shell, so it makes a really cool table presentation.”

Ingraham pulls some oysters out of the water, shucks them, and shows us the contours of the cup. The point is clear.

“The fact that Admiral is concentrating that much on each cup of oyster, that is what puts their product above and beyond,” says Seth Temple, head chef at La Chat Noir, an acclaimed restaurant in New Orleans’ Warehouse District that serves Admiral oysters daily. “They’re bringing that saltier oyster that customers crave. The salinity levels are matching that of Prince Edward Island, which is extremely rare in the Gulf.”

But along Prince Edward Island, it can take three to four years to grow an oyster to market. At Admiral, they can grow an oyster to market in as little as six months, due largely to the warmth of the water, and other factors. In terms of putting Mobile Bay oysters on the global culinary map, this is an enormous advantage.

For years, the Admiral team worked diligently to find the ideal location. They are now the southernmost farming operation in the Bay, with the Mobile River nearly 40 miles from the farm. Here, the substrate of the Bay floor acts like a beach, Ricciardone notes, and there is little to no detritus present. Certain impediments to oyster farming — siltation, sulfur, low oxygen — simply do not exist here.

PJ Waters, associate professor at Auburn’s School of Fisheries and director of the Mobile Bay oyster gardening project, says Admiral’s

“ WE DON’T HAVE SEWER TREATMENT PLANTS OR HEAVY INDUSTRY WITHIN DOZENS OF MILES FROM THIS SITE. IF YOU LOOK AT THE TINY COASTLINE OF ALABAMA, THERE’S NOT A LOT OF PLACES YOU CAN SAY THAT.

ANTHONY RICCIARDONE, CO-OWNER OF ADMIRAL SHELLFISH COMPANY

location is the secret sauce for its product. Last year, Waters said of oyster gardening in the Mississippi Sound, which is part of the Gulf of Mexico, that there was not enough salinity present for a bountiful harvest. The mortality rate was huge, and they lost nearly all the crop. Admiral’s location is resistant to this. “That’s because where he is,” Waters says. “He’s got the sweet spot. He’s getting that salt water as it wraps around Fort Morgan, and he tends to stay salty even if the Bay goes fresh.”

Ricciardone (who co-owns Admiral Shellfish Company with environmental scientist Chris Head) was born in New Orleans and grew up in Slidell. He was raised on seafood and fishing culture. He became a pharmacist by trade, studying at Auburn University. When you spend time with him, it’s clear he’s an enterprising, driven, and talented individual. He’s a fountain of information when it comes to aqua-farming. When you see all that goes into it, you have to be. This is an extremely delicate science, not unlike winemaking. And it requires tremendous work. Make no mistake: these are not gentlemen farmers we’re talking about.

Ricciardone became interested in oyster farming after participating in Auburn’s oyster gardening program in Mobile Bay several years ago. “I started researching it as a business model and reaching out to farmers and decided to jump in,” he says. “There had been so much innovation with top-water gear, it really elevated what an oyster can be for table-fare. I saw a way to make a uniquely branded Admiral oyster. It just took years of trial and error to get it right.”

Back in 2018, Admiral Shellfish Company tried setting up shop farther up the Bay. It was then Ricciardone and the team learned about the impact of development on the river systems. When you

clear an acre, and build a house on it, the chance for runoff increases greatly, Ricciardone notes. And then if there is any proximity to industry or farming, you’re going to run into some challenges as an oyster farmer. All of that freshwater runoff creates lower salinity and turbidity — not ideal conditions for table-fare oysters.

What all this amounts to is that restaurateurs from Birmingham, Atlanta, Houston, and New Orleans have taken notice even as Admiral oysters have become a big hit locally. Laurence Agnew, group executive chef at Jesse’s in Magnolia Springs, says a few factors give Admiral oysters their sterling quality. “It’s the salinity levels, and they don’t rush the process,” he says. “And I know how much they look after all the details.”

Agnew says it’s that blend of brininess along with melon undertones, especially in the spring, that makes them unique. He says he loves showing off the oysters to tourists who are trying a Gulf product for the first time. Having worked in restaurants in Ireland, Agnew says Admiral’s rival the best in the country, if not the world. Jesse’s is opening a new location soon on Fort Morgan Road (Jesse’s On The Bay), just a short distance from the Admiral farm. They’re even partnering with Admiral on a special boutique oyster called the “King’s Ransom.”

To achieve such a feat, that of raising a first-class proprietary variety, Ricciardone understands that clean water is necessary, and not just for oystering. He understands it’s imperative for our economy and way of life. For quite some time Admiral has sponsored a Mobile Baykeeper SWIM site at the farm’s location. Ricciardone says it’s important for the public to know this is a safe spot to swim. He understands there aren’t a lot of places where the public can

Farm manager John Ingraham (left) with Anthony Ricciardone, co-owner of Admiral Shellfish Co.

access the Bay for swimming, whether due to heavy industry on the western shore, or the wealth of private property along the eastern side. Mobile Baykeeper tests for fecal bacteria at its SWIM spots while Ricciardone notes that testing from the Alabama Department of Health indicates there is not a problem with chloroform, red tides, or industrial pollution at the farm.

“We don’t have sewer treatment plants or heavy industry within dozens of miles from this site,” he says. “If you look at the tiny coastline of Alabama, there’s not a lot of places you can say that.” And because Mobile Bay is one big estuary, one drop of rain affects the entire system. Rainfall in Birmingham makes its presence known here days later. He understands too the threat Barry poses 40 miles upriver, and that a coal-ash spill would mean “game over” for the oyster business. “If something like Barry happens, there’s no place to hide,” he says.

middens like those found along Dauphin Island testify to their importance as a life-source.

There is, however, a difference between a farmed oyster and the wild type. The farmed variety is a curated product that offers consistency. The precise locations in which the high science of oyster farming takes place is known in the trade as merroir — a term appropriated from terroir in viticulture, or grape-growing for wine. Water chemistry, the seasons, all of these things play a role. It’s all very sensitive. And it was not something I ever considered before my visit to Admiral. For consumers, Ricciardone says the farmedversus-wild question is like the difference between craft beer and factory beer, and it’s really about “whatever you’re into.”

Indeed, the curation process for a farmed oyster — from seed to harvest — is extreme. Not to mention that the permitting process through the Alabama State Lands Division is long and intense. The sea bed is leased from the state, and Admiral pays a yearly fee based on acreage.

Oysters have long been known as the kidneys of the sea; they are nature’s filtration system, and a single oyster is estimated to filter fifty gallons of water per day. They don’t filter pollution, per se, but they take phytoplankton and turbidity out of the water. With three-quarters of a million oysters growing on the farm, that’s a lot of filtration.

The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR), through its Marine Resources Division, has been working diligently through several programs to restore the population of wild oysters in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill, and the work could not be more timely. Sadly, over the course of the last century, the Alabama coast has lost 80 percent of its oyster reefs.

Love them or hate them, these bivalves have been crucial to the development of cultures along the Alabama Gulf Coast, dating back to the Mississippian period (800 AD to 1600 AD). The shell

Scott Bannon, director of the ADCNR’s Marine Resources Division, says the state has issued a fair number of permitted and licensed sites over the last couple of years and they’re looking to expand even more. “The product that comes out of Alabama right now is in high demand across the country,” he says. “We’re definitely encouraged by that.”

Bannon is hoping to expand the number of permitted sites for oyster farming. He notes that there are limiting factors like available real estate and access to water. But he says the state is hoping it can lease areas along the shoreline owned by Forever Wild, the state’s conservationist land trust.

Bannon understands that oyster farming is not for amateurs. This is hard damn work. But with merroir that potentially stands among the coveted few places in the world, where oysters of the highest quality can be raised, it is a challenge that some will accept.

AS RECENTLY AS 2019, THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE DESIGNATED ALABAMA AS ONE OF SEVERAL GULF STATES WHOSE SEAFOOD HAD BEEN GREATLY ENDANGERED.

Walkway to Admiral oyster farm.

BREAKING The Habit

Mobile Baykeeper’s Reduce The Use campaign, which is made possible through NOAA’s Marine Debris Prevention program, strives to improve the health of our waters by curbing consumption of single-use plastic.

by CAINE O’REAR

Oldhabits die hard in America. And one habit that has been especially difficult for Americans to kick is our wide-ranging and unrelenting addiction to single-use consumer plastic.

What makes plastic so insidious, and quite frankly so disturbing as a pollutant, is its omnipresence and longevity in our environment. It’s in the land, it’s in the air, it’s in the water, and now, it’s in our bloodstream, in the form of micro-plastics (which are generally considered to be any form of plastic less than five millimeters in length). And it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. (It is said that a plastic grocery bag will remain in the environment for up to 500 years.)

While plastic’s long-term effects on human health are still the subject of inquiry and debate, according to the Plastic Health Coalition, a research and advocacy alliance, we do know that micro-plastics disrupt endocrine function in humans, not unlike PFAs and other toxic chemicals. And it’s not just humans that fall prey to its poison. It’s been forecasted that by midcentury there will be more plastic by weight in our oceans than fish, a fact that augurs grave consequences for our fisheries and marine life. If that’s not enough, recent reports reveal the skies are now raining micro-plastics at a level much greater than previously thought. That fact alone should be enough to make the multitudes weep.

Plastic arrived on the scene as far back as 1870. The first plastics resin was invented by an American named John Wesley Hyatt who, as part of a competition, developed a celluloid billiard ball that could be used as an alternative to the billiard balls that were being made out of ivory. (At the time it was said to have saved elephants from extinction.) By the 1930s materials like Bakelite and polystyrene (styrofoam) were being developed. But for a long, long time, plastic was hardly a household word.

It was not until the Second World War that the plastic revolution took root. The military had discovered its versatility as a compound (the word plastic comes from the Greek verb plassein, which means “to shape or mold”) and began using it in all manner of war materials, creating in effect a plastic-industrial complex that continues to mushroom to this day. Raw materials like steel and rubber were subsumed for wartime production which created a vacuum for materials needed to manufacture domestic consumer goods. This is when plastic really became a leading player, nearly quadru-

pling in production. By the 1980s the United States was producing more plastic than steel.

In the past decade, more people have been linking plastic pollution with environmental and human health concerns. In more recent years, concern has grown over micro-plastics and their potential threat to humans. A great deal of alarm has been sounded regarding the levels of micro-plastics that are being ingested by humans. One widely seen study suggested humans were ingesting a credit card’s worth of plastic every week through food and beverage consumption. (This proved to be a misleading report; most experts agree the levels of micro-plastic that we’re ingesting is of a lesser amount, on average). Which means there is no need to panic — at least not yet.

“We don’t even understand where the majority of the micro-plastic is being generated,” Todd Gouin, an environmental research consultant, told The New York Times back in December. “Right now, the leading theory is that it’s being generated as a result of plastic waste that is lying around subject to U.V. degradation that causes it to fragment. So reducing the plastic waste problem is the No. 1 way of addressing the issue.”

Anyone who has logged time on our waterways, whether it be in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, Mobile Bay, or the Gulf of Mexico, has no doubt seen the plastic pollution problem first-hand. Birds strangled by fishing line. Sea turtles straitjacketed in grocery bags. Rainbows of Mardi Gras beads choking the source-waters of One Mile Creek, a tributary that flows into Mobile River and eventually the Bay. Indeed, there are parts of the Gulf that carry some of the highest concentration of plastics in waterways on the planet, due in part to the great number of plastic-producing facilities that dot our coast.

Mobile Baykeeper launched its Reduce The Use program in 2020, the same year the COVID pandemic arrived. In order to survive financially, restaurants had to rely more and more on takeout orders, and those orders usually came in a plastic container. Due to the stress and fear that attended the pandemic, it’s safe to say that reducing plastic consumption was not foremost in American minds. Now that some of the dust has settled, we’re starting to make strides in Coastal Alabama, and there is a growing contingent of business owners and citizens who are committed to reducing plastic in their business practicing and helping protect

our waterways.

Our “Reduce The Use” program seeks to remedy the problem at its source by calling for a significant reduction of single-use consumer plastic in Downtown Mobile. To date, we have nineteen businesses (restaurants, breweries, law firms, et al) that have signed up for Reduce The Use and implemented protocols to curb plastic consumption. They’ve adopted measures ranging from the elimination of plastic straws to forbidding plastic water bottles to offering compostable takeout containers. There are any number of actions one can take. All it takes is the will, and a little ingenuity. Participating downtown businesses include Chuck’s Fish, El Papi, Five, Dropout Bakery, Tom Loper Law, JPAR Gulf Coast Realty, Roosters, Nova Espresso, Downtown Mobile Alliance, Coastal Makers, Braided River Brewing, Noble South, Fuse Factory, Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Hummingbird Ideas, The Battle House Hotel, Joe Cain Cafe, Royal Street Tavern, and The Trellis Room.

Braided River Brewing, a microbrewery in Downtown Mobile, was one of the first companies to adopt Reduce The Use measures. Since its founding in 2020, the microbrew has been committed to sustainability and eco-friendly practices. That commitment to the environment is even embedded in the company’s name: “braided river” refers to the labyrinth of rivers, sloughs, and tributaries that wind their way through lower Alabama and converge to form the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, often referred to as “America’s Amazon” for its wealth of biodiversity and densely jungled landscapes.

Braided River has taken several measures to reduce plastic use. With the help of its distributor partner Bud Busch distributing, the brewery has replaced the plastic wrap on its outgoing pallets of kegs with reusable rubber bands. Grain sacks that contain hops are given to environmental groups for cleanups. The brewery also replaced petroleum-based, plastic to-go cups with agave cups and those made of a corn-based, more eco-friendly plastic.

David Nelson, the brewery’s CEO and founder, understands that operating as an eco-friendly business is the prudent route this dayin-age, and not the financial sacrifice or hardship that many business owners assume. “Just making more sustainable choices has a payoff long term,” Nelson says. “It is not even about having to make sacrifices. It’s making sensible choices, you know, for your own finances.”

Nelson understands the move to curb and eliminate single-use plastics is a long game. He’s aware that it’s not a problem that gets solved overnight. But he knows that little measures taken can build momentum in a community and lead to substantial change in the future. “You can make an effort and maybe you can’t solve it all in one go, but you don’t have to solve everything in one go. But if you can kind of chip away at little things and make good, small choices here and there, and try to build on those over time, you know, that’s really what we’ve been doing, is trying to chip away at our plastic use to find alternatives.”

Frankie Little, owner of Rooster’s restaurant and another early adopter of the program, likens the transition away from consumer plastics to the movement which led to smoke-free eateries and bars in the ’90s and aughts. “When we were making that transition, there were businesses and bars that said, ‘We’re going to close and go out of business if our customers can’t smoke.’ But any customers they lost from that they gained more when it became non-smoking. And if you ban Styrofoam, you’re probably going to gain some customers.”

Marianne Michallet Gordon, special projects manager at Mobile Baykeeper, has led the Reduce The Use campaign for the past year. A native of Lyons, France, Gordon springs from a culture that is not as wedded to plastic as the U.S.

“Where I’m from, France, we really don’t use plastic utensils or plastic plates at all,” Gordon says. “And it’s not just for environ-

Braided River has replaced petroleum-based, plastic to-go cups with agave cups and those made of a corn-based, more eco-friendly plastic.

mental reasons, although that’s a big part of it. Plastic doesn’t break down easily and can remain in our landfills for 400 to 500 years, long after our children and grandchildren will have left this world. And recycling only takes care of 5 to 10 percent of the problem.”

A 2020 report from Greenpeace, an international nonprofit, asserts that only a small percentage of plastic products are in fact recyclable. Only polyethylene (PET #1; water bottles, soda bottles) and high-density polyethylene (PET #2: milk jugs, shampoo containers ) can be claimed as truly recyclable in the U.S. today. (The City of Mobile does accept some plastics labeled 4 through 7, but the process to recycle these is long, challenging, and complex.)

For Gordon, eschewing plastic is also about living a more natural and balanced life. “Avoiding plastic consumption is also a matter of self-respect. In France, it’s rare to see people eat McDonald’s out of their cars. We like to take a proper lunch break and eat a well-balanced meal. It would feel disrespectful to the food, and to my body, to have it touch a plastic utensil or a Styrofoam cup. Eating should remain a sensory experience, not just a way to intake food to fuel our bodies. Our planet blesses us with free and available food and we should give it thanks by at least not trashing it with plastic-filled landfills. I would encourage everyone to take their reusable bag to the supermarket and refuse single-use plastic items at restaurants to let them know we don’t need more plastic.”

Earlier this year, France banned disposable plates, cups, and tableware in its fast-food restaurants (single-use plastic had already been banned) for on-site dining. The recent development is being hailed as nothing short of a revolution by environmentalists. The next time you’re in Paris, chomping down at McDonald’s along the Champs-Élysées, that beloved Royale with Cheese will be served on a reusable plate.

“Fast food is a sector that produces a lot of waste,” Alice Elfassi, who works with Zero Waste France, an NGO, told The Guardian

last year. “Although single-use plastic had already been banned, it had been replaced by large amounts of throwaway products like cardboard, wood, bamboo, which we consider an unacceptable waste of resources.”

France’s recent move testifies to the fact that single-use consumer plastic is part of a larger conversation about consumer waste, and how best to address it. And while recycling is by and large the right thing to do, it’s long been clear that recycling is not a panacea, and we need to devise more solutions to chip away at the magnitude of the waste problem.

It’s Mobile Baykeeper’s intention that the campaign to reduce plastic-use will continue after the expiration of the NOAA Marine Debris Grant in 2023. The Downtown Mobile Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing the city’s downtown business and entertainment district, has worked with Baykeeper on the campaign since its inception. Recently, the DMA created stickers emblazoned with the motto “Peace Out Plastic: Making Mobile Drastically Less Plasticky” to help raise continued awareness and effect change downtown. Reducing plastic in the Business Improvement District was part of the organization’s five-year management plan that was unveiled in 2019, when it was learned that plastic was the single-biggest source of litter on the streets downtown.

In recent weeks, the City of Mobile celebrated carnival. While the pre-Lenten season has always been a monument to excess and a consequences-be-damned mindset, Mardi Gras doesn’t need to represent a war against the environment. You’re not being a curmudgeon or kill-joy by working to keep the beads and plastic toys out of our streets and storm-drains, as we make the move toward a litter-free Mardi Gras. Our turtles, our fish, and our waters will thank you.

With the help of its distributor Bud Busch, Braided River has replaced the plastic wrap on its outgoing pallets of kegs with reusable rubber bands. (Photo courtesy Braided River)

It’s All Connected

A Q&A WITH MARINE SCIENTIST JOHN LEHRTER

Dr. John Lehrter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama and a Senior Marine Scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Prior to joining the faculty at USA and DISL in August 2016, Dr. Lehrter was a Research Ecologist with the EPA Office of Research and Development. We spoke with him recently about the health of the Mobile Bay Watershed and what drew him to Coastal Alabama.

interview by CAINE O’REAR

Did you grow up in Coastal Alabama?

No, I didn’t. My dad was in the military, so we kind of moved all over and then came back to Alabama. When I was in college, I started coming down to the coast in the early ’90s and really just fell in love with it, and decided I wanted to do my graduate work here. I did my Masters and Ph.D. through University of Alabama, but all my research was down at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

I’ve been in the area since the early ’90s. I worked for EPA for 13 years, and that was over in Gulf Breeze and the Florida Panhandle. My wife’s from Mobile, so we’re pretty rooted here now.

What initially drew you here?

I got a job working up in Alaska right after I graduated from undergrad and spent about three years up there on ships. And just all that time being on the water, looking at the water, that’s when I really knew that I wanted to be an oceanographer. And I came back here and my parents were coming down to Dauphin Island for a weekend and they asked if I wanted to tag along, so I did. And I came down and thought, ‘Oh, this is pretty cool, right here on the edge of a barrier island. And you’ve got the Gulf and the Bay and the marsh and the Delta.

What is the greatest threat to the health of the Mobile Bay Watershed?

It’s like death by a thousand cuts. It’s hard to just point at one thing. I mean, there certainly are places in the world where you can say, it’s this one polluter or maybe a mining operation or something that dominates the stress in the system. But for the most part, and this is why it’s so hard to manage these systems, it’s all these things that are happening simultaneously.

You’ve got population growth, land-use change, and changes in our river systems. The damming and the re-engineering of the hydrology, the deepening of the ship channel, and then pollution with just the population growth and runoff. So it’s this basket of things that are happening. And what makes it challenging and interesting from a scientific perspective is that it’s really difficult to take all of these things apart and see how they interact.

My main research emphasis is on oxygen in the water. If you look at the things that all life needs, oxygen is right up at the top of the list. If you don’t have adequate oxygen in the water, you’re just not going to have animals, period. Mobile Bay has a long history of jubilees. We call them jubilees because they run fish and crabs and flounder up on the beach. And that’s a good thing for humans, but it’s obviously not a good thing for those animals trying to escape the low oxygen water.

And so trying to understand where that problem occurs, how often it occurs, and what’s driving it is a main theme of my work. Is it related to nutrient pollution? Is it related to warming? Is it related to the deepening of the ship channel, which introduces more salt into the Bay that enhances the physical environment that allows low oxygen to occur? So yeah, we’re trying to address all those things.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about the Bay’s health?

A lot of misconceptions are related to the brown water. And that’s because we’ve got other places nearby that are so beautiful and so easy to contrast with visually. If we go down to Orange Beach, the water is very different. But the reality is that Mobile Bay is a river-dominated system. And probably it hasn’t always been as muddy

as it is now, but it’s never going to have the kind of water clarity that we see in a lot of other places. So I think there is this misconception that it’s nasty or that it’s not swimmable because it’s brown.

So you consider it to be a fairly healthy bay?

One problem with being able to say whether it’s healthy or not is we don’t have a good baseline. No system really does. We’ve got all this anecdotal information from the two or three generations older than us about what the Bay used to look like. And it was very different. But we don’t have real data. So it’s always a really hard question when people ask you about the health of the Bay.

When you start looking at systems as big as Mobile Bay, there just are not that many worldwide. And there’s only maybe a handful of other systems that look like Mobile Bay. And frankly, at this point, there’s just no place on Earth that’s not human impacted.

We can certainly look over the last several decades and we can see trends. For example, we know based on long-term data that the prevalence of low oxygen is getting worse. But we lack data for many other water-quality variables, which makes it difficult to state the condition and whether it is changing.

The decimation of the Bay’s seagrass is often cited as an indicator of pollution. But you told me earlier that seagrass prevalence is a hyperlocal issue, and not one that encompasses the whole watershed. Seagrass has been used in a lot of other systems as a sort of bellwether because it requires really good water clarity. There are two ways the grasses can grow. They can grow submerged, for one. And in that case, they need good water clarity for the sunlight to reach them. But then there’s grasses that can grow in really shallow water where the blades actually lay on the surface of the water. And in that case, it doesn’t really matter what the water clarity is. So in our system, we have a lot of the latter, especially in the upper Bay and Delta.

If you went up in the Delta a few months ago, you would see what’s called tape grass, Vallisneria americana. And it’s thick and really beautiful. It doesn’t mind the turbid water. And that kind of grass is really driven by how salty the Bay is. In years like this year, when we’ve had a lot of fresh water, a lot of river flow, it expands because it likes that lower salinity. And then in drought years it’ll just disappear or retreat up into the Delta. So those kind of grass beds really aren’t good indicators for water quality other than change in salinity.

But submerged grass beds are good indicators of water quality. My wife’s grandmother, who was in Point Clear going as far back as the 1920s, talked about how when she was younger there was submerged grass on the Point Clear shorelines. And now there is not, which indicates the water clarity has decreased and that we’ve gotten browner or more turbid water. So in that case, the loss of seagrass may be a good indicator of water quality change. And those grass beds are so important.

What we’ve learned with some of the aquatic species, such as speckled trout, is that there are early juvenile stages when they’re just tiny little fish, and they settle out into those grass beds almost exclusively. And so as we lose that habitat, a lot of critters that rely on such habitat to avoid predators and to find their prey are affected.

Why should the average citizen in Coastal Alabama care about the Bay’s health?

I think we all need to recognize that we are a part of the Earth system and not apart from it. Historically, because the earth was so bountiful, we always looked at nature as a system of infinite resources, right? When you look at fisheries in the ocean, it’s only been in the last 50 years or so that we’ve really recognized that humans can deplete those fisheries.

In order for humans to survive, we need these ecosystem services that are conducted everywhere by nature that produce food and fiber, produce oxygen, remove pollutants, etc. We just take those for granted, and we always have but I think if folks paid attention to this they would recognize that everything is connected.

We’ve been very blessed in Alabama. We’ve traditionally had low population density in the watershed. One of the reasons I love living here is just being able to get up in the Delta. Ten minutes from here and I can be in this vast wilderness that is not only aesthetically beautiful but also providing all of these essential life-support services for humankind and I think we take that for granted. But it’s not a guarantee that it’s going to be there in the future. So I think the average citizen just needs to be aware that we’re all connected to this, and that there are limits to growth and how much humans can exploit our resources.

John Lehrter, out in the field

STUDENTS On The WATCH

HOW SWAMP’S WATER - QUALITY MONITORING PROGRAM FOSTERS A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD OUR WATERSHED

Through our Strategic Watershed Awareness and Monitoring Program (SWAMP), students from Vigor and Leflore high schools use Alabama Water Watch’s (AWW) EPA-approved methodology to monitor our waterways each month. We spoke with several of these students about what the program has taught them.

by CAINE O’REAR

RYKERRIA HOLYFIELD, VIGOR (SOPHOMORE)

“I learned about testing water and checking for temperature and cleanliness. I’ve learned about cleaning up the environment. I hate dirty areas. It’s changed my perspective on my community and what I want to do for a career as well. I really like just getting out and testing the water.”

TAYLOR NELSON, CITRONELLE HIGH SCHOOL (FRESHMAN)

“I’ve learned from SWAMP that different things affect our water quality, and that these things affect our economy as well as our environment.

TONIYAH HOPKINS, VIGOR (SOPHOMORE)

“My favorite part of SWAMP is looking at the alkalinity and turbidity of the water. And cleaning up the environment to make our community a better place. I also like working with Mobile Baykeeper because they teach us so many new things.”

WOODROW PATTON, VIGOR (SENIOR)

“It’s really fun to know about the waterways and how we can do better and remove the trash from the area for cleaner waters. I really enjoy this. And we get to go around and help the environment for the animals and our community. A lot of people don’t care about the communities. They go around and throw trash in the water. It’s bad for the animals and our health as well.”

AMBER COLEMAN, LEFLORE (JUNIOR)

“I’ve been doing it for two years. I love being out and seeing the difference between the waterways. I love being out in the field. I’ve become more aware. I now notice how much trash I see. We need to stop littering. I tell my classmates and friends this.”

GABRIELLE DENNIS, LEFLORE (JUNIOR)

“A lot of the waterways we’ve looked at have turtles and fish so we try to pick up as much trash as we can so it doesn’t hurt them. My favorite part is testing the waters. It allows us to compare and contrast the water quality at different times. It’s made me more aware of water quality and what I can do to prevent problems.”

ISAIAH TUNSTALL, VIGOR (SOPHOMORE)

“I’ve learned how to take water samples and how the water has changed through time. It’s changed my perspective. I’m noticing a lot more stuff happening, like seeing more dirt and trash in the waters.”

RAMANI MARTIN, VIGOR (SOPHOMORE)

“We’ve learned a lot of new things. I’ve enjoyed going to different spots and seeing the different types of water. I understand now that we need to protect our community and start picking up litter so it doesn’t go in our waters.”

Mobile Baykeeper’s SWAMP Program is made possible by the generous support of AM/NS Calvert.

Seeking Out The Source

Mobile Baykeeper teams up with the University of South Alabama to source-track pollution in Dog River.

by JOSH TOLBERT

Dog River covers an expanse of 55,000 acres and catches runoff from a large portion of the City of Mobile and Mobile County. Everything from “The Loop” to the Mobile Regional Airport, all the way down to parts of Theodore, drains into Dog River. When it rains, the runoff from the farms, cul-de-sacs, and parking lots in the watershed makes its way into Dog River, picking up contaminants along the way. There are also old sewer pipes and leaky septic tanks that become inundated with water and spill untreated wastewater into those same streets and drains which flow into the river.

Mobile Baykeeper, in partnership with the University of South Alabama, is working to improve water quality in Dog River through microbial source-tracking. The goal of this project is to identify major sources of bacteria, which can impact swimming safety in the area.

In 2020 and 2021, weekly testing for Enterococcus (fecal bacteria indicator) in Dog River revealed a fail rate of approximately 50 percent for a “safeto-swim” status. Although Dog River is classified by the state as having water quality which is only suitable for the survival of wildlife and not supportive for recreational means, we argue that current and historical use should create a means for a waterbody’s quality to improve and meet actual uses.

Dog River is regularly frequented by fishermen, boaters, jet skiers, swimmers, and kayakers. So no matter how often the river supports safe bacteria levels for swimming, we need to make improvements to meet the community’s further needs of this waterway and others in the Bay area.

Bacteria levels are one of the biggest contributors to water pollution. One reason why bacteria isn’t as synonymous to swim safety as bad weather or waterway hazards is due to the fact that it isn’t always visible. For example, when I was helping with sample collection for this study, it was a beautiful day out. There were lots of people on the water and I would’ve wanted to join them if I hadn’t

been working.

However, once we got back to the lab to process and saw the bacteria results in comparison to those from the same area after a dry spell (100-200 times higher), I realized there is more to swim safety than meets the eye. Our “wet weather” results were noticeably elevated from dry conditions, even though the water didn’t seem particularly dirty or polluted. People can see an oil sheen on the water’s surface, or spot plastics and trash floating nearby, but bacterial inputs can often be harder to visually detect.

Mobile Baykeeper routinely monitors fecal bacteria levels around the Mobile Bay area to inform the public. But thanks to funding from the Stephens Foundation, we are working to not only keep you informed on where to swim today, but to make those places safer to swim tomorrow. By identifying bacteria sources as human or animal-based and finding out where input is most extensive, we can better develop preventative campaigns for the Dog River watershed.

So, what does a source tracking day look like in Dog River? We start by taking samples at the beginning of the river where Eslava Creek and Bolton Branch flow in and work downstream to sample at nine other tributary points. We continue working downstream all the way to where Dog River meets Mobile Bay. We take bacteria samples, record data like water temperature and dissolved oxygen levels, and collect water which will be analyzed for DNA (this helps us answer the question of “whose poop is it?”). These results are used to “paint a picture” of fecal bacterial pollution in the entire watershed. This will ultimately help us target our bacteria runoff mitigation efforts in a more precise and accurate way by understanding the sources and relative contributions to anticipate appropriate interventions. We believe the microbial source-tracking project in Dog River is necessary to revive the coastal waters and tributaries of the Mobile Bay Watershed.

Patrol member Dakota Bilbrey (left) and USA grad student Penny Demetriades.

You Are What You Eat

Alabama’s Fish Consumption Advisory program lets citizens know which caught fish are safe to eat in your area.

by EDWARD DENTON

How often do you think about whether the fish on your dinner plate is safe to eat? This question should resonate with anyone who wants to utilize the bountiful resources the Mobile Bay Watershed has to offer.

Fish consumption advisories are published in our state by the Alabama Department of Public Health, which provides critical information about which fish in specific waterways are safe to consume. Mobile Baykeeper is working toward a future where our community no longer has to ask whether they can eat what they catch. To accomplish this, we need to understand what causes advisories to be put into place, how we as humans interact with our environment to influence these factors, and the scope of the problem.

Within the past several decades, certain types of fish have been found to contain elevated levels of certain contaminants, such as methyl-mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). These contaminants can be harmful to human health if ingested in large amounts over an extended period of time, leaving anglers and their families who frequently eat certain species especially vulnerable. In the Mobile River Basin, all restrictions for fish consumption are due to methyl-mercury contamination. Fish that are at the top of the food chain and have a long lifespan are more likely to contain higher levels of mercury. Through a process called biomagnification, all the mercury that is present in smaller critters is absorbed by larger animals when consumed through the food chain. This gives a whole new meaning to “you are what you eat.”

Mercury-related fish consumption advisories not only impact the health of local residents, but are particularly concerning to vulnerable populations such as children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers. This is because infants and children, whose nervous systems are still being formed, are more sensitive to the potential health effects of contaminants and may be more likely to experience immediate or long-term health complications, such as birth

abnormalities. High levels of mercury can damage the brain and nervous system, leading to symptoms such as tremors, memory loss, and numbness in the hands and feet.

Long-term exposure to mercury has been linked to damage of the kidneys and kidney failure and cardiovascular problems which can lead to increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Besides human health, fish consumption advisories also impact the local economy and culture, as fishing is an important recreational and commercial activity in the waters around Mobile Bay.

To address this issue, the state performs monitoring efforts and issues annual fish consumption advisories for many waterways throughout the state, including Mobile Bay, the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, and many of the rivers and creeks that flow into Mobile and Baldwin counties. These advisories provide specific guidance on which types of fish are safe to eat and in what quantities, based on the levels of contaminants found in the fish.

Each advisory, specific to each location and species, says one of four things: “No restriction”, “1 meal/month”, “2 meals/month”, and “Do Not Eat Any.” Some of the advisories apply to “all species” in the body of water. Otherwise, the advisories are species-specific. Largemouth bass, striped mullet, black crappie, spotted bass, blue catfish, and channel catfish are just some of the species mentioned in Mobile and Baldwin counties. In fact, there are a total of 51 advisories for the Mobile Bay area as of 2022.

As we continue to understand how this work and future work will be impactful toward reducing fish consumption advisories, we ask that you stay aware of which species and waterways are listed in your area of interest. Just call the Alabama Fish Consumption Advisory Hotline, a free resource provided by Waterkeepers of Alabama (844-219-7475), and dial “4” for our area.

If you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime. If you teach him to call the Fish Consumption Advisory Hotline, he can eat healthily as well.

A fish consumption advisory sign posted off the Causeway.

Jesse’s Creole Broiled Admiral Oysters

INGREDIENTS

12 oz Crystal Hot Sauce

1 oz Worcestershire

1⁄2 oz lemon juice

1⁄2 T minced fresh garlic

1⁄2 T chopped fresh rosemary

1⁄2 T Jesse’s Creole Seasoning

2 cups Shrimp Stock

12 oz whole unsalted butter (cubed)

DIRECTIONS

Combine all ingredients (except for whole butter) and reduce in a small sauce pot by 80 percent.

Slowly add in 12 ounces of whole unsalted butter to form an emulsion. Once completed, add mixture to a good safe container with lid that can be held for up to one (1) week in the refrigerator.

Top freshly shucked Admiral oysters with about two (2) teaspoons of the Creole butter mixture, and then top with shredded Gruyère cheese. Broil in oven or on grill for about five (5) minutes or until cheese is broiled and bubbly.

RECIPE COURTESY LAURENCE AGNEW, GROUP EXECUTIVE CHEF AT JESSE’S RESTAURANT IN MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, AND THE SOON-TO-OPEN JESSE’S ON THE BAY, ALONG FORT MORGAN ROAD.