A Weekend At Dauphin Island And The Mississippi Coast

I stayed at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab at the mouth of Mobile Bay this past weekend, largely doing my job as liaison between UAH and DISL. I met the new director, Dr. Scott Quackenbush, and talked about DISL's summer school offerings and how they might better serve more students. A big question is scheduling classes so that they don't interfere with the member schools, both at the beginning and the end of the summer. I don't have any snappy ideas on the subject, but then we haven't had any conflicts with UAH classes so it's not an immediate problem for me. All of our students did well this summer as usual; they go to DISL to study and have fun, not to drink beer 24 hours a day (round up the usual suspects).

Ruth and I also spent much of a day driving out along the Mississippi coast looking for a suitable spot to collect some longnose killifish, Fundulus similis, for my long-term study on the population genetics structure of F. similis and its very close relative, F. majalis, from the Atlantic coast. We found a good spot in the town of Pass Christian at the boat marina (the one with the restaurant called Shaggy's). As the tide was going out along the sandy beach we were able to seine 14 subadults from water's edge, which is the typical habitat. They are the westernmost population I've been able to collect. Not very far to the west of Pass Christian the coast becomes tidal swamp and is much more difficult to collect along if you don't have a boat, which I don't. So Louisiana might be problematic for this project. The goal is to collect samples roughly every 200 miles along the coast, from Massachusetts at least to Texas, and I've been able to make several collections along this length. Right now I need fish from at least one site in Texas, as well as the Florida Atlantic coast, Georgia, North Carolina, the Delmarva, New Jersey and New York; I have samples from Nantucket and mainland Massachusetts. This collection might be my next summer's project.

On a purely political note, we also spent an afternoon in New Orleans around the French Market and the Quarter. The place is still recovering from Katrina, but what struck us was the ubiquity of Obama for President material. The tourist traps on Decatur Street all sell at least one type of Obama t-shirt, and a lot of the vendors in the French Market, too. And nary a McCain object in sight.