Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve
Today I went to sample ‘impacted oysters’ at the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Mississippi. The plan was to go with the whole Auburn crew who were going to be scoping out field sites, but the weather was not great, and in the end it just ended up being a quick trip out with Courtney and I to get oyster samples. It’s really unfortunate to be in this estuary because I’m looking for oysters that have been exposed to oil, it is a breathtaking landscape. Jay McIlwain, who works at the reserve, took us by boat to the first site which was a Native American shell midden. Very cool. We didn’t have any luck finding live oysters here, only four or five tiny juveniles, but we did see tar balls - my first up close and personal with the oil. The tar balls have the consistency of melted Tootsie Rolls and are mushed around some of the oyster shells. We moved on to another site and Jay used the paddle to find submerged oysters, then I hung over the side of the boat to collect them from the bottom. Awkward, yes, but it worked great. A few of the oysters had a really funny orange color to them (I didn’t get a picture), which makes you wonder about oil and/or dispersants, but there was definitely no oil smell. The whole thing just makes you pretty paranoid, maybe for good reason, I don’t know. When we got back to the Shellfish Lab on Dauphin, I had another batch of oysters to sample. Glen Chaplin, a research associate, had collected intertidal oysters near the lab where oil washed up. I should mention they were five feet underwater at the time of sampling! Everyone here has been so welcoming and helpful and informative and pretty awesome in general, so it was reluctantly that I left Dauphin Island and set out on the five hour drive to Apalachicola, FL.
-Mac
