Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
Speaker 1: wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
Speaker 1: conserving both. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. On this episode,
Speaker 1: we're setting seal into uncharted waters. Literally, we're gonna learn
Speaker 1: about one of the most recognizable but still unstudied areas,
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico, American.
Speaker 2: Y'all know what I am.
Speaker 1: Now, Before we dive into the brackish water of this episode,
Speaker 1: I want to draw our attention back to part of
Speaker 1: a previous conversation that I had with Steve Vanella when
Speaker 1: we were just about to launch this podcast. It went
Speaker 1: like this, talk about the podcast, what it's gonna be like,
Speaker 1: So Backwood University very wildlife biology based, but also like
Speaker 1: the influence of humans on these animals positive or negative?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 1: But the influence is usually very strong one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not so great.
Speaker 1: But no, that's what's kind of focusing in on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nothing has escaped us.
Speaker 1: No, nothing has escaped us. I mean truly, that seems
Speaker 1: to be the case. And honestly, with many of the
Speaker 1: subjects in previous episodes, I've had at least some knowledge
Speaker 1: or hunch of what our specific human influence was going in.
Speaker 1: But in this particular episode and the topic of the
Speaker 1: Gulf and even more specifically the Mississippi Sound, I didn't
Speaker 1: know how much the idea of nothing escaping us would
Speaker 1: come into play. I mean, don't get me wrong. I
Speaker 1: figured I would find something. I just I didn't think
Speaker 1: it would be as shocking as this.
Speaker 3: When you travel to our beautiful Mississippi Gulf coast and
Speaker 3: it is, it is beautiful, and I love it. As
Speaker 3: you're traveling down Highway ninety and you're looking out at
Speaker 3: this beautiful white beach, the first thing you have to
Speaker 3: understand is that is they call it a man made beach. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's real sand. But what happened was Mississippi did not
Speaker 3: have this pristine, beautiful zen beach.
Speaker 4: Back in the day. It was a marsh.
Speaker 3: It was a basically multi level estuary marsh land followed
Speaker 3: by oyster reefs, and so it was not something you
Speaker 3: could go walk on and have a beautiful beach day.
Speaker 3: And so the idea was, let's let's have a beach
Speaker 3: because it's going to beautiful. And it is and it
Speaker 3: is very nice, But what are we going to do
Speaker 3: with all that estuary drainage that was there. What they
Speaker 3: did was they have storm water pipes. So as you're
Speaker 3: driving down our Highway ninety and we're looking at our
Speaker 3: beautiful beaches, you're going to see these big black pipes.
Speaker 3: Ever so often those black pipes are storm drain runoff water.
Speaker 3: It funnels into the sound and all it is. They
Speaker 3: took what used to just trickle in and filtered into
Speaker 3: a pipe scenario. And unfortunately, those pipes come from an
Speaker 3: ever increasing urban area. Humans right, and so DEEQ, Missippi
Speaker 3: Department Environmental Quality, DMR, Missippi Department Marine Resources, everyone is
Speaker 3: working together to do water testing at those runoff pipes,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately, those runoff pipes have occasional bouts of high
Speaker 3: levels of ekali and contaminants. That is a problem that
Speaker 3: is very well known. And then they make an announcement, Hey,
Speaker 3: that beach is closed. No one wants to hear a
Speaker 3: beach is closed. So now they just say, we don't
Speaker 3: advise to swim and water if you're immune compromised right
Speaker 3: now at this particular location. It's problematic on so many levels.
Speaker 3: Problematic for tourism, it's problematic for the environment, and the
Speaker 3: problem is not right there at the beach level. It's
Speaker 3: somewhere up upstream, you know. And so when we can
Speaker 3: sort of come up with a solution to help filter
Speaker 3: that water before it just basically cap waters into the sound.
Speaker 1: Which is what the estuaries were doing.
Speaker 3: What the estuaries were doing. And then imagine also that
Speaker 3: all those oyster reefs and oysters are amazing filters. We
Speaker 3: have created this environment which we love and it's beautiful,
Speaker 3: but now we're going to have to think a little
Speaker 3: bit about helping nature help us. So that is absolutely
Speaker 3: something that is on the radar down here, and it
Speaker 3: is a problem that we are aware of.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties and efforts to generate tourism revenue
Speaker 1: and create recreational opportunities, the state of Mississippi undertook construction
Speaker 1: of what would be the largest man made beach in
Speaker 1: the world in present day, that title has since been
Speaker 1: taken over by some of the areas in Dubai, but
Speaker 1: it still ranks pretty high up there on the list,
Speaker 1: over twenty six miles of man made beach. The real
Speaker 1: tragedy here is the marshes, wetlands and estuaries that were
Speaker 1: there beforehand.
Speaker 2: Those things act as.
Speaker 1: Natural water filters, which is crucial because this particular area
Speaker 1: is right where the Mississippi River as well as several
Speaker 1: other rivers dumped directly into the Gulf, as well as
Speaker 1: mainland runoff from ever growing urban areas. And I have
Speaker 1: to make a confession here. I'm a Mississippi native. I
Speaker 1: have lived here in this state virtually my whole life,
Speaker 1: and up until today, I had no idea that those
Speaker 1: beaches were constructed by the hand of man. And frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm shocked and now my brain is reeling with so
Speaker 1: many different questions.
Speaker 2: What are the effects of this?
Speaker 1: Is this why beaches in Mississippi get such a stick
Speaker 1: for having dirty water? How does this affect the fish?
Speaker 2: Our health?
Speaker 1: And ultimately, if I didn't know a fact about my
Speaker 1: own backyard that was as big as important as this,
Speaker 1: what else do I not know? The voice that you
Speaker 1: heard me talking to is doctor Holly Morocco, a marine biologist,
Speaker 1: a passionate naturalist and conservationist, and a genuine savant on
Speaker 1: the Gulf. Before we dive into this full fledged conversation
Speaker 1: with doctor Morocco, I think it's important that we experience
Speaker 1: the salty waters of the Gulf and Mississippi Sound for ourselves.
Speaker 2: All I can think about now is what that would
Speaker 2: have looked like.
Speaker 5: Mm hm, imagine giant oorsterifs. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's a real shame.
Speaker 3: It really is. Times. Yeah, it's a real shame.
Speaker 1: I'm now riding inside doctor Morocco's research boat. We just
Speaker 1: left the marina out of Past Christian, Mississippi, and we're
Speaker 1: headed to go search for dolphins. But as we shoot
Speaker 1: across the top of the choppy water, my eyes are
Speaker 1: constantly being drawn back to the white saint beaches. I've
Speaker 1: seen these beaches my entire life, but now I just
Speaker 1: can't look at them the same. It's really an odd feeling.
Speaker 1: It's like a watered down version of finding out Santa
Speaker 1: Claus isn't real. I don't really know what to do
Speaker 1: with it, to be honest.
Speaker 3: The average stepth of the fountain is twelve feet o kid.
Speaker 3: It very shallow area, and it's a wind based tide system,
Speaker 3: so the winds are fishing things in and out.
Speaker 1: As Doctor Morocco gives me some quick facts about the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Sound, all of us on the boat are constantly
Speaker 1: scanning the water trying to catch the glimpse of a dolphin.
Speaker 1: It wasn't too long before we saw a dorsal fin
Speaker 1: break the surface of the water.
Speaker 5: Oh look, so you're right, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 3: Gonna put it in neutral and we can just sort
Speaker 3: of sit there. You go, another another nice little So
Speaker 3: this is all.
Speaker 4: Feeding behavior right now, when they're popping up and going.
Speaker 3: So we got a lot of good, good action right
Speaker 3: in front of us.
Speaker 1: As we sit with the boat in neutral looking at
Speaker 1: these dolphins come up for a breath, some of the
Speaker 1: crew aboard begins taking pictures with a long lens camera.
Speaker 1: My initial thought was they just wanted some good dolphin photos,
Speaker 1: but doctor Morocco quickly explained to me that this is
Speaker 1: a part of a very extensive project. The pictures are
Speaker 1: specifically targeted at the animal's dorsal fin. Unbeknownst to me,
Speaker 1: a dolphin can be identified by its dorsal fin, much
Speaker 1: like humans can be identified by their fingerprints. Each one
Speaker 1: is unique to the individual animal, so creating a catalog
Speaker 1: of photos over the years, they're able to learn more
Speaker 1: about population density, population health, certain skin diseases that can
Speaker 1: be indicators for water quality. It's really fascinating stuff. So
Speaker 1: do you do you think, like, so these you're causing
Speaker 1: around cat Island and you probably see.
Speaker 2: It the same dolphins like multiple times.
Speaker 3: Over absolutely and scientifically we'll be able to prove that
Speaker 3: once we have these matching fins, you know, over time
Speaker 3: and this can this is this is a little years
Speaker 3: of work will help us establish these types of things.
Speaker 3: But for now, I we absolutely know we seen the
Speaker 3: same dolphins. Gotcha, and this is really prime dolphin nursery habitat.
Speaker 3: Dolphins give birth out here.
Speaker 1: What time of here is that?
Speaker 3: And that's here we see most births in late February
Speaker 3: and March, gotcha, but it is it could happen anytime
Speaker 3: of year.
Speaker 4: Dolphins are able to give birth anytime.
Speaker 1: These will all be bottle thoseed dolphins.
Speaker 4: Dolphins, And look at that bird.
Speaker 3: That is a really cool that's frigate birds and frigates.
Speaker 4: Come in in the wind.
Speaker 3: But that's a they're really cool figger bird.
Speaker 1: After a few more dolphin viewings and quick lessons, we
Speaker 1: turned the boat around and headed back towards the marina.
Speaker 1: I learned very quickly that this is a subject that
Speaker 1: requires a much more in depth conversation to even begin
Speaker 1: to underst stand it all. But before that, I want
Speaker 1: to share one more story from the boat ride that
Speaker 1: doctor Verrocco refers to as one of her favorite facts
Speaker 1: about Mississippi dolphins.
Speaker 3: So I will tell you my favorite dolphins story about
Speaker 3: Mississippi dolphins, okay, and that is that we have hardhead
Speaker 3: catfish yep, the catfish that live out here with saltwater
Speaker 3: catfish yep.
Speaker 2: And they are nasty.
Speaker 3: They have these spines that are like bony spines that
Speaker 3: will absolutely kill you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it will hurt if.
Speaker 3: You try to pick up a catfish. So in Florida,
Speaker 3: dolphins have washed ashore dead with catfish stuck in their esophagus.
Speaker 3: So they try to swallow a catfish their spines going
Speaker 3: into the esophagus and they're dead. They literally death by
Speaker 3: catfish that's trying and need a cap. And that is
Speaker 3: not there's our dolphins right there.
Speaker 4: Not uncommon.
Speaker 6: When you walk the beaches here in Mississippi, you're gonna
Speaker 6: see a catfish head randomly strewn across the beaches. Our
Speaker 6: dolphins have learned to pop the heads off with the
Speaker 6: spines and eat the body of the cat No kidding.
Speaker 6: It is a very specific feeding technique that's been passed
Speaker 6: down from generation to generation of dolphins here, and so
Speaker 6: whenever you're on the beach and you see a catfish head,
Speaker 6: it's probably a twisted spine. That is a dolphin that
Speaker 6: has figured out how to flee off the head and eat.
Speaker 4: So our dolphins know how to eat.
Speaker 2: Catfish that slick. We got smart dogs.
Speaker 3: We got smart dolphins.
Speaker 1: Take that, Florida. Our dolphins are smarter than yours. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I want to learn more about this subject. I think
Speaker 1: there's a much bigger story here than we realize, and
Speaker 1: doctor Morocco is a perfect person to talk to about it.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the Mississippi Sound. I know that's a
Speaker 1: broad question.
Speaker 3: So the Mississippi Sound basically extends from the Louisiana Mississippi
Speaker 3: line all the way over to the Alabama Mississippi line,
Speaker 3: and it's bordered by the mainland in the north and
Speaker 3: then in the south. We have these beautiful barrier islands
Speaker 3: many people have heard of. Some folks may have been
Speaker 3: able to visit. The Ship Island is one that people
Speaker 3: are able to visit.
Speaker 4: And so these these.
Speaker 3: Barrier islands in the northern mainland creates this amazing estuary habitat,
Speaker 3: and that is the Mississippi Sound. And I think one
Speaker 3: of the things that makes it really remarkable is the
Speaker 3: sheer amount of river influence.
Speaker 4: That it has.
Speaker 3: A it's a brackish estuary. The salinity varies, but we
Speaker 3: have a ton of river influences, including the Pascagoula River
Speaker 3: of course, the Mississippi River borders. We have the Mobile
Speaker 3: Delta on the other side, the Bay Saint Louis, the
Speaker 3: Wolf River, the Jordan River, And so I think a
Speaker 3: lot of times people don't realize just the sheer amount
Speaker 3: of river influence that we have for the Sound.
Speaker 1: Does all that river influence does it have any like
Speaker 1: how much effect does that have on the different species
Speaker 1: that we have in the Sound?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. So it's a dynamic habitat. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a changing habitat because of that salinity flux. If you
Speaker 3: have a lot of rainfall or you know, extra river runoff,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have a lot more fresh water entering. Or
Speaker 3: if you have a huge storm pushing gulf water you know,
Speaker 3: towards the mainland, you're gonna have more salinity. This is
Speaker 3: the perfect habitat for oysters. Oysters need a nice balance
Speaker 3: of salinity changing Shrimp do really well in this. It's
Speaker 3: really good for sediment. Essentially, the Mississippi Sound is a
Speaker 3: perfect nursery habitat for young fish for you know, all.
Speaker 4: The fish that we like to fish for as well.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of food, a lot of.
Speaker 3: Things to eat, and so it's a it's a it's
Speaker 3: an incredibly dynamic habitat for for lots of things.
Speaker 1: I found this significantly interesting. Within in fluence from multiple rivers,
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Sound is what's referred to as brackish water,
Speaker 1: which basically means it falls somewhere in between freshwater and saltwater,
Speaker 1: and the ratio of saltwater to freshwater can fluctuate depending
Speaker 1: on the river influence, which makes for an extremely dynamic
Speaker 1: in constantly changing habitat. This results in a unique array
Speaker 1: of wildlife diversity in the area. Redfish, speckled trout, flounder,
Speaker 1: kobea shrimp, sharks, and dolphins. Just to hit a few
Speaker 1: of the high notes. But let's be honest, that's something
Speaker 1: a lot of folks know. Let's focus in on something
Speaker 1: that not a lot of folks know. Including myself before
Speaker 1: this interview. When we talk about managing game species on land,
Speaker 1: like deer turkeys, a term that we here come up
Speaker 1: all the time is habitat. We recognize it as being
Speaker 1: a key part in why species are able to survive
Speaker 1: in an area. But in terms of aquatic species, we
Speaker 1: tend to know a lot less about what is below
Speaker 1: the surface other than the fish themselves, because just like
Speaker 1: land animals, aquatic wildlife requires different habitats. And when I
Speaker 1: started asking doctor Morocco about the habitat features of the Gulf,
Speaker 1: I really started to get my mind blown.
Speaker 3: As you make your way past the Barrier Islands, that's
Speaker 3: when you actually enter the Gulf, and as you are
Speaker 3: traveling south past the Barrier Islands, you're going to reach
Speaker 3: a canyon drop off, the DeSoto Canyon, and it's this
Speaker 3: incredibly amazing habitat where the Mississippi River has an influence.
Speaker 3: The depth, you know, the massive drop in depth where
Speaker 3: you know you're reaching thousands of feet, you know, from
Speaker 3: thirty to sixty feet down to hundreds to thousands of feet,
Speaker 3: and so it creates this incredible diversity of life in
Speaker 3: that area.
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree that when we hear
Speaker 1: the word canyon, most of us think about the ones
Speaker 1: that we see on land, which goes back to the
Speaker 1: point I was making earlier. Few of us think about
Speaker 1: the entire world that lives just below the surface of
Speaker 1: the salty water we call the ocean. The DeSoto Canyon,
Speaker 1: only sixty miles offshore, cuts through the Gulf's soft sloping
Speaker 1: continental shelf and forms a giant underwater canyon that is
Speaker 1: over three thousand feet deep and forms an incredibly unique
Speaker 1: habitat that supports crazy amounts of marine life like corals, fish,
Speaker 1: and whales. Some scientists will tell you that we know
Speaker 1: less about the floor of the ocean than the surface
Speaker 1: of the moon. How crazy is that. I want to
Speaker 1: hear doctor Morocco's take on some of the crazy marine
Speaker 1: life that lives around this canyon that most of us
Speaker 1: are completely unaware of. Tell me about giant squid.
Speaker 3: So I was just absolutely so excited, because of course
Speaker 3: I pay attention to these science science things. Being a scientist,
Speaker 3: I would be it would be.
Speaker 4: Bad if I didn't pay attention.
Speaker 3: But I'm always excited when I hear about researchers from
Speaker 3: around the world that come to Gulfport. Mississippi to climb
Speaker 3: aboard the r V Point Sir, which is a research vessel. USM,
Speaker 3: you know, acquired this vessel not too terribly long ago.
Speaker 3: I think they've had it for maybe about ten years.
Speaker 3: Don't quote me on that. They acquired this vessel from Monterey, California.
Speaker 3: They brought it over and and this this this boat
Speaker 3: went to work and it booked solid people that want
Speaker 3: to study the golf come to Gulfport, Mississippi to hop
Speaker 3: aboard this vessel. And so when I was familiar with
Speaker 3: these giant squid researchers that had been working in Japan
Speaker 3: and they had been able to develop a lure that
Speaker 3: was attracting a giant squid, and I was like, that's cool.
Speaker 3: And then this this researcher when they climbed aboard the
Speaker 3: Point Sir, and then they put the lure, you know,
Speaker 3: right at that Sodo Canyon right it, right right there,
Speaker 3: and you know, off of Mississippi and Louisiana, don't you know,
Speaker 3: Really quickly a huge giant squid comes up to their
Speaker 3: lore and they got it on video, a living giant squid,
Speaker 3: the first one ever in North American waters right there,
Speaker 3: and and you know, when you think about needle and
Speaker 3: a haystack, what are the chances this is clearly something
Speaker 3: that is happening right there in our backyard.
Speaker 2: Yeah you would.
Speaker 1: I mean you could presume right since if they were
Speaker 1: able to pull that off relatively quickly, like hey, that
Speaker 1: maybe means there's more of them down there, not just
Speaker 1: the only one swimming around was like oh hey.
Speaker 4: Right, oh hey just so happened to be there.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, you know that statistically that means that we
Speaker 3: are you know, there there is some incredible habitat for
Speaker 3: giant squid and obviously these cephal pods like octopus and
Speaker 3: squid and so very very exciting.
Speaker 4: It's something that.
Speaker 3: We could be very proud of collectively as coastal research
Speaker 3: to say, you know that we can provide this and
Speaker 3: it's something that we need to you know, I just
Speaker 3: we can take ownership of these things. You know, we
Speaker 3: can be very proud that our southern States have some
Speaker 3: incredible marine biodiversity that we can take ownership of.
Speaker 1: Allow me to blow Yell's mind for a second. Giant
Speaker 1: squid a thought to be exceedingly rare marine animal. These
Speaker 1: things have been known to grow up to forty three
Speaker 1: feet in length and are rarely ever observed alive, and
Speaker 1: the only one ever photographed in North American waters just
Speaker 1: happened to take place sixty miles off the Mississippi Gulf
Speaker 1: coast in the DeSoto Canyon. Are you kidding me right now?
Speaker 1: And this is not even old news. This happened just
Speaker 1: around five years ago, and I'm not even done yet.
Speaker 1: Guess what else is swimming around in these waters?
Speaker 3: How crazy is it that you could technically potentially have
Speaker 3: a well watching tour leave out of Mississippi to go
Speaker 3: well watching, which is just absolutely sane. Okay, so it's
Speaker 3: a little bit harder than that. But the truth is,
Speaker 3: we have a resident population of sperm whales that live
Speaker 3: off of our shores, and it ranges anywhere from you know,
Speaker 3: fifty to eighty miles. They're living at that canyon drop
Speaker 3: off area, that DeSoto Canyon where the Mississippi the Mouth
Speaker 3: drains into the Gulf, and we know they're they're there,
Speaker 3: they live there. Studies have been few and far between,
Speaker 3: so we don't have a full understanding of exactly how
Speaker 3: they utilize the habitat, but we do know that we
Speaker 3: see moms and calves, we see you know them there
Speaker 3: year round and so with you know, it's something that
Speaker 3: we need to do a better job of studying and understanding,
Speaker 3: especially as the Mississippi River dynamics are in constant flux
Speaker 3: and change and the nutrients that are going in that
Speaker 3: are potentially feeding the animals these sperm whales are living
Speaker 3: off of. We need to understand all of that now,
Speaker 3: you know, before something changes, are or if we look
Speaker 3: at it now and realize that, you know, potentially we
Speaker 3: are we are putting things into the water that don't
Speaker 3: need to be there, that are not helping this this
Speaker 3: particular population of sperm whales.
Speaker 4: How big are these things?
Speaker 3: So a sperm whale is the largest toothed well and
Speaker 3: so you know, little little science, quick quick biology science lesson.
Speaker 3: When you think of the big whales, most of the
Speaker 3: time you're thinking of something that is a filter feeder.
Speaker 3: They have the bayleen. Many people remember that from school,
Speaker 3: where they filter these tiny little kreole or little microscopic creatures.
Speaker 3: They filter it through those those plates and they feed
Speaker 3: that way. So the big giant blue whales and on
Speaker 3: back whales, but sperm whales actually have teeth. They are
Speaker 3: toothed whales and they are the largest and they're you know,
Speaker 3: as long as a school bus and just this absolutely,
Speaker 3: you know, an incredible animal that was very important back
Speaker 3: in the whaling days when people were you know, harvesting
Speaker 3: whales for energy. Sperm whales are one of the most
Speaker 3: important ones that they did. Another quick fun fact, we
Speaker 3: had a whaling industry in the.
Speaker 1: Golf really at wet sure did in the Gulf. In
Speaker 1: the Gulf, people like going out of Mississippi, even going.
Speaker 3: Out of Mississippi Louisiana and going down there and literally
Speaker 3: harpooning sperm whales in the Gulf. I know, I've been
Speaker 3: doing as much digging as I can, and not being
Speaker 3: a historian, I haven't necessarily had the time but our energy,
Speaker 3: but it's been I've done enough to know that How
Speaker 3: crazy is it that that we had whaling here?
Speaker 1: Raise your hand if you knew there was a resident
Speaker 1: population of sperm whales right off the Mississippi coast. Raise
Speaker 1: your hand if you knew there was once a whaling
Speaker 1: industry that operated out of Mississippi and Louisiana. I know
Speaker 1: y'all can't see me right now, but rest assured my
Speaker 1: hand is not raised I had no idea, and this
Speaker 1: stuff is blowing my mind. Be on the lookout for
Speaker 1: a future episode diving into that whaling industry, but for now,
Speaker 1: I've got to learn more about this underwater world that
Speaker 1: apparently I know nothing about.
Speaker 3: There are mountains and canyons and forests and different systems
Speaker 3: that are living there, and everything is working together to survive.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite interests that's fairly local is a
Speaker 3: mountain called Mountain Top bank Reef literally Mountaintop bank Reef,
Speaker 3: and it is located south of the Barrier Islands. It's
Speaker 3: about eighty miles offshore of Mississippi before the canyon drop off.
Speaker 3: We have a deep sea coral reef called Mountaintop bank Reef.
Speaker 3: And was out doing some exploration, just bathymetry, looking at things,
Speaker 3: and they accidentally stumbled upon this coral reef that we
Speaker 3: have off of our you know, off of our mainland,
Speaker 3: and it's incredible. It's a mountain that extends up it's
Speaker 3: about two hundred feet below the water surface and it
Speaker 3: goes down about four hundred feet, but it is a
Speaker 3: literal mountain and we have coral growing on it, and
Speaker 3: it's something that I'm very very inspired to want to
Speaker 3: go take a closer look at.
Speaker 1: So you're saying usm figured out that was there, Yes,
Speaker 1: when did that happen?
Speaker 3: And I think it was like twenty nineteen, it's really recent, Okay,
Speaker 3: So that affirms what I was thinking is it's like
Speaker 3: I hear prepping for this episode and like just kind
Speaker 3: of getting curious about the ocean and marine.
Speaker 1: All that stuff, and all I heard from several different
Speaker 1: resources and different individual researchers and biologists they're like, man,
Speaker 1: there's just so much we don't know so much. So
Speaker 1: you're talking about within our own you know, like like
Speaker 1: basically in our backyard there.
Speaker 3: Is an entire an entire coral reef.
Speaker 1: And mountain that we that we just found in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: That we just found. Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's incredible. It's incredible.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask it might be a silly question, like
Speaker 1: other than other than like the physical barrier of like
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot easier for us to go find
Speaker 1: a terrestrial mountain or you know, observe something on land,
Speaker 1: Like is there any more outlying reasons why we don't
Speaker 1: know as much about this kind of stuff or why
Speaker 1: it's there's stuff like that still undiscovered.
Speaker 3: You know, I think we the Gulf has received a
Speaker 3: lot of interests for what we can extract from it,
Speaker 3: so from the you know, extracting oil, natural gas, things
Speaker 3: like that, and so there's been quite a lot of
Speaker 3: studies to understand the underlying my imagery of the golf
Speaker 3: and the depths, and so we actually have a lot
Speaker 3: of good baseline data, but it is just very much
Speaker 3: it's this depth, it's this type of you know, of structure.
Speaker 3: It's something that would be good you know, to drill
Speaker 3: or not good to drill. Aside from that, these more
Speaker 3: biology ecology things have not received the same attention. And
Speaker 3: so this particular coral reef had gone unknown simply because
Speaker 3: no one had ever actually looked. They had done this
Speaker 3: on our scans, they had understood that this is something
Speaker 3: that was there, but until USM went down with an
Speaker 3: r o V. An r o V is a remote
Speaker 3: operated vehicle, a super fancy term for basically a robot
Speaker 3: that goes down with a camera. That's when they got
Speaker 3: visual eyes on it. And so one of my grants,
Speaker 3: my more recent grants, is I've actually applied to get
Speaker 3: myself an ro O v that I can take out,
Speaker 3: because sometimes you just need to put eyeballs on things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's exactly what it was. It was something as
Speaker 3: simple as let's just go look at that, and they did,
Speaker 3: and sure enough, Wow, we have this. It's an incredible
Speaker 3: ecosystem right there. The few corals that they were able
Speaker 3: to identify are more of the deep sea coral, which
Speaker 3: is something that's even more unknown than when we think
Speaker 3: of these tropical reefs. So there's there's new species that
Speaker 3: will ultimately be discovered if someone goes in looks this
Speaker 3: is you know, it's it's very pristine habitat. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, they as they were traveling over in
Speaker 3: some of the documentation that they shared on the with
Speaker 3: the media, there was some some marine debris laying on
Speaker 3: this this reef, and so of course, you know, we
Speaker 3: can't we can't escape that.
Speaker 4: I don't believe.
Speaker 3: But this is why we need to study these things.
Speaker 3: This is now is the time to go down there
Speaker 3: and figure out you know, let let's understand its role.
Speaker 4: There's a researcher over.
Speaker 3: In Alabama who coined the mobile tint All Delta as
Speaker 3: America's Amazon Mississippi Louisiana and Alabama.
Speaker 4: We have so much river influence.
Speaker 3: We are literally America's Amazon right here because we have
Speaker 3: such incredible biodiversity, and it's something that that term. Coining
Speaker 3: that term really helps people grasp the sheer amazingness that
Speaker 3: this is. We are America's Amazon, and this is important.
Speaker 1: I want us to think back a few episodes when
Speaker 1: we were talking with the black bear biologist Anthony Ballard
Speaker 1: about some of the controversies surrounding the black bear recovery
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. He said, in so many words, that we
Speaker 1: as humans have a habit of looking at wildlife in
Speaker 1: terms of what can.
Speaker 4: It do for me?
Speaker 1: And let me be clear, I'm not here at all
Speaker 1: to try and demonize humans using natural resource. For one,
Speaker 1: that would be super hypocritical of me. And two, we
Speaker 1: need our natural resources for a long list of reasons.
Speaker 1: I'm simply saying that we don't just do that with wildlife.
Speaker 1: We do that with our land and our water as well.
Speaker 1: And evidence would heavily suggest that we sometimes can think
Speaker 1: about that way too acutely, too narrowly, so narrowly that
Speaker 1: we sometimes don't think about the down the road consequences.
Speaker 1: A perfect example of this would be the prior mentioned
Speaker 1: man made beaches of Mississippi. The land wasn't serving us
Speaker 1: the way that we wanted it to, so we physically
Speaker 1: constructed a beach, and in doing so, we ripped out
Speaker 1: the estuaries, and that decision affects the overall quality of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Sound and the Gulf to this very day.
Speaker 1: And now doctor Morocco was telling us that much of
Speaker 1: the reason that there is still so much unknown in
Speaker 1: this area is that we haven't looked into it and
Speaker 1: studied it much beyond reasons that would serve us. What
Speaker 1: can we extract from it? And again, just to emphasize,
Speaker 1: I am not proposing that we shouldn't extract things that
Speaker 1: we need. I'm simply saying, maybe we should consider getting
Speaker 1: more of a big picture view of this entire ecosystem,
Speaker 1: how it operates, and the role it plays. Doing this
Speaker 1: would allow us to make much more informed decisions and
Speaker 1: how we can still get what natural resources we need
Speaker 1: without ruining something vital in the process. Y'all know the
Speaker 1: old saying, don't throw out the baby with the gulf
Speaker 1: water or something like that.
Speaker 3: Kudos to the occasional scientist who has tried to bring
Speaker 3: attention to these things, and our federal partners, Noah the
Speaker 3: Great Keith Mullen worked for Noah for many years and
Speaker 3: he's been out there, you know, publishing papers and working
Speaker 3: hard and trying to you know, explain these things. But
Speaker 3: outside of that, we have not had the capacity in Louisiana, Misissippi,
Speaker 3: Alabama to conduct these studies. And it's all mostly because
Speaker 3: most people don't even know it's there. And so one
Speaker 3: of the things that I'm trying to do here at
Speaker 3: Mississippi State is say, these things are there, and we
Speaker 3: need to take ownership of it, and we need to
Speaker 3: build that capacity so that we can study it.
Speaker 1: We we have all this there, we have all these
Speaker 1: we have all this diversity, we have all these different
Speaker 1: marine mammals. We haven't even talked about dolphin. Yeah, why
Speaker 1: why like why do we need to take ownership of it?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: We we definitely place value, you know, in Mississippi own
Speaker 3: on those things that we can hunt, our fish, which
Speaker 3: is very important and I and I get it. And
Speaker 3: outside of the things that you can hunt and fish,
Speaker 3: sometimes they don't get as much attention. And that is
Speaker 3: the question, Well, what is it going to do for me.
Speaker 3: And so my program is called Coastal One Health and
Speaker 3: what I am doing is utilizing these marine mammals as
Speaker 3: the canary and the coal mine, and by studying them
Speaker 3: and understanding their health and how well they're doing, they
Speaker 3: are telling us how how well the environment is doing.
Speaker 3: And by studying it, we can not only help ourselves
Speaker 3: and the health of humans, but we can use that
Speaker 3: to understand the health of our environment. And is there
Speaker 3: something that we can do to improve? Are there, you know,
Speaker 3: things that we can do to to help these animals
Speaker 3: do better? So ultimately that will help us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how I mean, what's the the state of the
Speaker 1: the Gulf the Mississippi sound like?
Speaker 4: Are are we healthy?
Speaker 1: Are we do we need?
Speaker 4: Are we not healthy?
Speaker 3: Where are we at?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, there's not a simple answer for that.
Speaker 2: We are.
Speaker 3: Facing numerous challenges. You know, the oil spill didn't do
Speaker 3: us any favors.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't imagine, so.
Speaker 3: So, you know, as horrible as the oil spill was,
Speaker 3: that really launched a effort for these southern states to
Speaker 3: take a look at the biology and the health of
Speaker 3: the environment. And I can honestly say before the oil spill,
Speaker 3: there was not nearly as much opportunity to study these things.
Speaker 3: And so since then we realize that we are dealing
Speaker 3: with aftermath of oil spill, but we're also gaining a
Speaker 3: better understanding of what all this river runoff is doing
Speaker 3: into the gulf, and so a lot of this runoff
Speaker 3: is going to have human, you know, negative human effects.
Speaker 3: These are things that once we understand exactly what is
Speaker 3: coming into our water, be it pollutants, agricultural runoff, antibiotics,
Speaker 3: bacterial pathogens, then we can go to that source and say,
Speaker 3: is there a way that we can reduce this amount
Speaker 3: of runoff going into our golf? And I see us
Speaker 3: right now in that position. We are in the still
Speaker 3: data gathering position, still trying to understand the big picture
Speaker 3: of what's happening. And so once we want, you know,
Speaker 3: keep supporting these researchers, keep supporting these you know, the
Speaker 3: folks that are down here working hard, and then we'll
Speaker 3: be able to come up with some solutions. We can
Speaker 3: all coexist. It's it's going to you know, we have
Speaker 3: an amazing, amazing place down here for fishermen, be it
Speaker 3: commercial or recreational. We have you know, incredible habitat. We
Speaker 3: have all of these dolphins. We can all we can
Speaker 3: all survive together, we can all do well together. And
Speaker 3: so that's where I really appreciate the fishermen. And then
Speaker 3: I also am very appreciative of our commercial shrimpers, particularly
Speaker 3: that especially are you know, artisanal, These these local shrimpers
Speaker 3: who are working so hard to make a living and
Speaker 3: you know, shrimping for this fresh golf shrimp, you know,
Speaker 3: highly supportive of them. But what's fascinating to me is
Speaker 3: we have dolphins, our dolphins that live out in the sound.
Speaker 3: Generation after generation have been have been chasing shrimp boats.
Speaker 3: These these mama dolphins are not dumb. They they teach
Speaker 3: their young how to safely chase the shrimp boat, so
Speaker 3: to speak. And I'm very fascinated in that interaction that
Speaker 3: these dolphins are benefiting from these shrimpers because of the
Speaker 3: bycatch are you know, as they're stirring up the sediment
Speaker 3: and fish or moving, these dolphins can take advantage of it.
Speaker 3: And so I'm very excited to learn more knowledge about
Speaker 3: that and study those interactions, but also show this is
Speaker 3: a coexistence.
Speaker 4: Example.
Speaker 3: Some people are like if humans just disappeared, everything would
Speaker 3: be fine, okay.
Speaker 4: In nature, sure, you can't think like that. Though.
Speaker 3: You cannot think like that. And I don't like to
Speaker 3: think like that. I I you know, we're here. We
Speaker 3: we deserve a space and this planet as well. But
Speaker 3: we can also take advantage and understand, especially the dolphin
Speaker 3: fishing coexistence, to say, all right, what can we learn
Speaker 3: about this coexistence?
Speaker 4: You know, situation.
Speaker 3: These dolphins have learned this, and and and these fishermen
Speaker 3: know these dolphins. We need more research. It's a big place,
Speaker 3: there's there's a room for for more research. And there's
Speaker 3: no reason why we can't have our Mississippi kids and
Speaker 3: students who have this dream of studying dolphins, Why they
Speaker 3: cannot graduate from one of our universities and we can
Speaker 3: put them to work studying dolphins in the Sound.
Speaker 1: And just there's just seemingly a lot for us to
Speaker 1: figure out, like a whole lot.
Speaker 4: There's so so so much.
Speaker 1: If I were to say, you know, look into the future,
Speaker 1: strip away all worry and just leave me with optimism. Sure,
Speaker 1: what does this program look like? What does the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Sound look like? What does the overall health of the
Speaker 1: golf look like?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, what I what I would love to envision
Speaker 3: is a little bit of a mindset change, and in
Speaker 3: the terrestrial world it's a growing momentum. People are starting
Speaker 3: to grasp the concept of native plants yep, and how
Speaker 3: native plants serve the health of the environment better than
Speaker 3: non native plants, something as simple as that. So you
Speaker 3: have a home in a suburb, you have this lawn
Speaker 3: that you you have to put pesticides on, you have
Speaker 3: to put fertilize your own, you have to use water
Speaker 3: on to create this sort of green stamp. You know
Speaker 3: that that is considered beautiful still by most people. We
Speaker 3: may have to change our mindset where maybe beautiful looks
Speaker 3: a little different than what we think. And so where
Speaker 3: I take that is with our Gulf coast. We see beautiful,
Speaker 3: pristine zen white sand is beautiful, and it is, it
Speaker 3: has its beauty, But we're probably going to have to
Speaker 3: give nature back a few of those areas to be
Speaker 3: able to do its filtering work for us. And when
Speaker 3: we look at those areas, there's going to be marsh
Speaker 3: grass and there's going to be you know, tidal surges
Speaker 3: that are gonna.
Speaker 4: Not always look pretty.
Speaker 3: Areas where we don't just grade it to have these
Speaker 3: perfect zen lines where we allow the benthic invertebrates to
Speaker 3: do their thing. And so my vision is as we
Speaker 3: drive down ninety, we're going to have some of that
Speaker 3: beautiful sand, but we're going to also have marsh back diversity,
Speaker 3: some diversity, and we're going to have people understanding the.
Speaker 4: Beauty of that biodiversity. How cool is it to.
Speaker 3: Be able to take a walk through a nature marsh,
Speaker 3: you know, next to a beach, and see all of
Speaker 3: all of the wildlife in it.
Speaker 1: With the understanding that it's supposed to be there.
Speaker 4: It's supposed to be there.
Speaker 3: I believe. I believe that we can. We can we
Speaker 3: can utilize the resources humans and we can provide a
Speaker 3: healthy environment for these these creatures to survive as well,
Speaker 3: and we can all co exist.
Speaker 1: There's a balance to it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely, It's not all doom and gloom. You know,
Speaker 3: it's sometimes it's really difficult and you can go down
Speaker 3: some crazy, scary rabbit holes. But I do believe I'm
Speaker 3: approaching this from the standpoint of we're all in this together,
Speaker 3: and we are smart, and we can all do this together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you're going at a glass half full.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely, Otherwise I think I would I'd probably not
Speaker 3: be able to do this job.
Speaker 1: I want to thank all of you for listening to
Speaker 1: Backwoods University as well as Bear Grease in this country life.
Speaker 1: And I want to give a big shout out out
Speaker 1: to Onyx Hunt for making this podcast possible. If you
Speaker 1: liked this episode, share it with somebody that you bet
Speaker 1: had no idea that we had giant squids swimming around
Speaker 1: in North American waters, and stick around because if this
Speaker 1: podcast was the Gulf, we've only gone three feet below
Speaker 1: the surface. There's a whole lot more on the way.