Highly productive habitats along coastal Alabama in the northern Gulf of Mexico support major fisheries, ecosystem services, and outdoor activities. Monitoring and better understanding these valuable habitats in a time of changing climate and advancing tropicalization will aid in their management for conservation and sustainability.

The Dauphin Island Alabama Observatory was established in 2021 and is based out of Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL). DISL is located on the eastern tip of Dauphin Island, a barrier island in the northern Gulf of Mexico, and is surrounded by Mobile Bay, Mississippi Sound, and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The northern Gulf of Mexico (nGoM) has highly productive nearshore coastal ecosystems, and includes major fisheries for blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus), oysters (Crassostrea virginica), red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus), and speckled trout (Cynoscion nebulosus). The nGoM is facing environmental challenges such as coastal development, changes in sea level, and tropicalization. Our partnership with MarineGEO will help assess and track changes in coastal habitats as they experience and respond to these environmental challenges. Our primary coastal habitats are seagrass meadows and salt marshes, and we established annual sampling sites in these habitats in 2021 as part of MarineGEO. Our annual sampling sites span two coastal counties in Alabama: Mobile County and Baldwin County. In 2021, we also participated in two MarineGEO network research projects: PANELS (Photogrammetry And Next-gen sequencing for EcologicaL Systems) and SED-BIOME.

DISL has been collecting real-time environmental monitoring data in and around Mobile Bay since 2003 as part of the Alabama Real-Time Coastal Observation System (ARCOS; https://arcos.disl.edu/). The Alabama Public Aquarium (https://www.disl.edu/aquarium), formerly named the Estuarium, is located at DISL and highlights four key habitats of coastal Alabama: the Mobile Tensaw River Delta, Mobile Bay, the Barrier Islands, and the Northern Gulf of Mexico.

MarineGEO Team

• Principal Investigator: Kenneth L. Heck, Jr.
• Emelia Marshall

Participating Institutions

Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) provides marine science programs to the members of the Marine Environmental Sciences Consortium (MESC), which are 22 public and private colleges and universities in the state of Alabama. For a full list of MESC members, please visit https://www.disl.org/about/mesc