The fourth largest estuary in the United States, Mobile Bay, supports a productive and diverse ecosystem that can only be described as a hidden fishing gem. But Mobile Bay is also home to the Port of Mobile–Alabama’s only deepwater port–making it a center of international shipping and cruise industries. For decades, infrastructure projects, mainly dredging, have threatened Mobile Bay’s ecosystem.
Today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is nearing approval of a major dredge project to deepen and widen the primary shipping channel into the Port of Mobile Bay. Mobile Baykeepers, a local group of concerned anglers and conservationists, is sounding the alarm about the looming devastation to this productive ecosystem. The project would disperse 90 million cubic yards of dredge material–mud, sand, and whatever else has accumulated over decades–into the bay and choke out habitats. Follow along to learn more about this issue and an opportunity for local stakeholders to advocate for more sustainable dredge disposal methods: Mobile Baykeeper is holding a community meeting on Thursday at 6 p.m. to discuss concerns about the dredging project at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church on 9101 Dauphin Island Parkway in Theodore.
Flylords: William, before we dive in to the impeding threat to Mobile Bay, can you introduce yourself?
Baykeeper: My name is William Strickland. I grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, hunting and fishing on the rivers, creeks, and swamps of West Alabama. I had two very different grandfathers who both loved the outdoors and taught me a lot about life. One was a union man at the BF Goodrich tire factory who viewed the game warden as the enemy. The other was a Kiwanas Club president who was a man-about-town and loved to bird hunt. My dad had a mixture of both of those sentiments but taught us that we were born in the wrong era and should’ve been mountain men.
Being from Tuscaloosa, I got to live out the dream of most boys from the area when I played football for Nick Saban at the University of Alabama. I got a degree in engineering there and began to work as an environmental engineer. I was in it to save our waters, but sometimes our clients were more interested in doing things the cheapest way. So I went into international ministry work for a while before joining Baykeeper here in coastal Alabama.
I have three kids who I’m trying to teach to love our woods and water. We spend as much time on the water as possible and I am proud to say they all can bait a hook.
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Flylords: Tell us a little bit about Mobile Bay and its fisheries?
Baykeeper: Mobile Bay and the Mobile-Tensaw Delta are special. The Mobile River drains most of the state of Alabama, and the watershed is the most biologically diverse in North America. They call it America’s Amazon. The bay is essential a giant estuary as it is very shallow, which gives us an opportunity for more habitat than most bays.
Unfortunately, it is not currently known as a destination fishery. When I moved to Mobile, I was excited about saltwater fly fishing and watched a documentary about catching redfish on the fly along the entire Gulf Coast. In the film, the guy started at the border of Texas and Mexico and fished all the way to the tip of South Florida. He had every state, save one: Mobile Bay. That broke my heart because of the stories from the old timers about how it was such an incredible fishery.
Speckled trout, flounder, and redfish populations are all up in recent history, but are nowhere near the populations of the last 100 years. I know that’s the case in most fisheries, but I don’t think it should be acceptable.
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Flylords: Ok, now what is this dredge project that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposing?
Baykeeper: The Corps of Engineers is deepening and widening our ship channel, which no one is against. However, they have been using a method called “thin layer placement” to dispose of the dredged material into Mobile Bay since 2012. The locals here call it mud dumping.
The practice was illegal from 1986 until 2012. In 2012, the Corps got emergency permission to start disposing of dredge in the bay in reaction to some storms that made it difficult to dispose of it properly. That permission has remained until today, and the volume that will be disposed of in the bay will increase with a deeper and wider ship channel.
Flylords: Dredging happens all the time, right. Why is this project potentially so harmful to Mobile Bay?
Baykeeper: It’s not the dredging that’s the problem. It’s the mud dumping that is.
Sediment comes from the rest of the state into the Bay and will always have higher turbidity levels than places like South Florida. But if you talk to old-timers, they remember days when the water was gin clear.
Today it’s about as turbid as it’s ever been now. When we dump millions of cubic yards of mud into the bay, it causes the floor of the bay to become soft and easily blown out by currents and wind. That increased turbidity is like putting a tarp over your lawn, which means the seagrass doesn’t get light and dies. We’ve lost about 66% of our original seagrass beds in the bay.
What’s more, the silt covers up our oyster reefs, which are really having a difficult time right now. We’ve lost an estimated 85% of our original oyster beds in Alabama.
If you were trying to sight fish, there are fewer and fewer days that are suitable to do so. As a fly angler, I was looking forward to chasing redfish on the flats. There will be days when all the conditions are perfect, but the water is still too muddy to see a fish from any distance.
In short, the mud dumping harms the habitat that is needed to hold fish, crabs, shrimp, and other marine life. It means fewer juvenile creatures have places to hide and grow up.
Flylords: 90 millions cubic yards of mud is ****ton…Can you put that volume of dredge material into perspective?
Baykeeper: 90,000,000 cubic yards over the next 20 years is enough mud to cover every football field in America, all 42,000+ of them, with a foot of mud. It is enough to cover the entirety of Mobile Bay with 2.5 inches of mud.
Our small minds cannot comprehend these volumes, which is why it’s a difficult issue for people to wrap their minds around.
Flylords: What has been done so far to try and mitigate this looming disaster?
Baykeeper: The people of coastal Alabama have spoken out.
Over 13,000 letters have been written to our federal elected officials asking them to ban the practice. Congress will get a chance to put this into law by mid-June of this year. If they’re not able to get it done, the people are not going to stop, and they are ready to use everything at their disposal: from litigation, to state law, to protest, to make sure that this practice ends, and ends soon.
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Flylords: How can people get involved and help protect Mobile Bay?
Baykeeper: Visit SaveMobileBay.com to write your elected official and tell them that this is a big problem they need to fix. If you have the time and know-how, you can write a physical letter or call your elected official as well.
