GULFPORT, Miss. (WLOX) – 35 members of the Mississippi River Basin Panel visited the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies on Wednesday to learn more about South Mississippi’s marine environment.
The panel, led by Mississippi River Basin Panel administrator Elizabeth Brown, works to prevent invasive species like algae from entering the region.
“What’s happening in our freshwater fisheries is impacting our marine species,” Brown said. “We wanted to learn about the marine environment and how we can work together to protect our natural resources.”
The focus of the visit was the algae bloom that occurred in the Mississippi Sound after the Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carre Spillway in Louisiana to prevent flooding.
IMMS research shows how that negatively impacted dolphins.
IMMS’s president Dr. Moby Solangi said 153 bottlenose dolphins died after the spillway openings.
Solangi also said there’s another solution to prevent flooding along the Mississippi River.
“We lost oysters. We lost shrimp,” Solangi said. “The river has become very shallow and so instead of adding levees, we need to dredge it, so the water flows faster out of it and doesn’t overflow into our neighboring states.”
IMMS said around 7,500 bottlenosed dolphins inhabit coastal waters between Mississippi and Louisiana.
Solangi said protecting the Mississippi River Basin is essential for the region’s growth and development.
“We need to be really careful as people are looking at this Mississippi river and its effects, then we point out to them how those things affect Mississippi,” he said.
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