Southern Miss Fisheries Team Rebounds from Katrina
October 28, 2005
OCEAN SPRINGS – Ousted from their research building by Hurricane Katrina, fisheries biologists at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs are once again out on boats, sampling coastal fish as part of ongoing research programs.
Katrina left fisheries labs and offices a jumble of mud and scientific equipment, but the fisheries research teams are determined to keep their research going right along with recovery of physical facilities.
"We are back on the water for the three major programs that require immediate field work," said Harriet Perry, director of the fisheries center at the Lab. "Our boats are undamaged, and we were back in the field in time to get all of our September samples for our long-term database.
Perry said that sampling for fish species' early life history stages contributes to a 30-plus-year database that GCRL has.
"We have taken samples since the early 1970s at the same sites, a line of sampling stations that extends from Bayou Bernard to Horn Island. It gives us a baseline to measure change."
Before they could get back to their pre-Katrina mission of pursuing new knowledge needed to help Mississippi fisheries stay alive and healthy, the scientists, technical staff and administrators all pitched in to clear offices and labs.
A St. Martin garden center donated a small pop-up canopy, and the fisheries staff turned it into an outdoor lab for processing samples of the fish they collect. They cleaned Katrina mud out of a small wood-frame building and turned that into a makeshift lab for sorting the tiny fish according to species, measuring them and recording data.
"I thought Camille was bad, but this was much worse," said Jim Franks, fisheries biologist who rode out the 1969 hurricane at the Lab as a graduate student. "I was out here the day after Katrina. The destruction was mind boggling."
Franks said inside the building housing most of the fisheries facilities, everything was turned upside down -- equipment, gear and freezers full of samples. The storm surge had soaked books and filing cabinets full of archived photos of Mississippi's fishing industry and fisheries research and scattered them in the muck and mud.
"My first thought was that we need to do something now. My next was where do we start," Franks said. Evidence of his early salvage efforts greeted later arrivals with scientific papers and photos neatly lined up and drying in front of the building.
"We have a great team," Perry said. "Everyone knows his job and understands the importance of this work. They all did everything possible to get us to the point we could go out into the field to continue the data set for the state. We completed September's sampling on schedule, and we are in good shape for October."
She said the fisheries center is still a long way from where it needs to be.
"We lost over $100,000 of equipment in our water quality lab alone. It is already rusting. All our people are sharing offices, computers and phones. We hope to be back in our building within a couple of weeks."
Perry credited the GCRL physical plant crew with leading the charge on initial recovery efforts. She said they pushed hard to get debris cleaned up and to have contractors moving in for repair and restoration.
The fisheries center's field work currently in progress is important to a number of GCRL partners and supporters – the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
At the same time Perry's teams are collecting for the Lab's fisheries database, they are also collecting biological samples for DMR and water quality data for DEQ, information critical to the health and safety of people as well as the environment.
"All the different marine resource agencies and institutions suffered losses of different kinds," Perry said. "We pooled our resources in order to keep operating. In the aftermath of Katrina we are strengthening relationships, and that will serve Mississippi well."
The Center for Fisheries Research and Development is a unit of the GCRL within the university's School of Ocean and Earth Sciences, College of Marine Sciences.
Fisheries scientists, students and staff pose with their outdoor lab Wednesday, Oct. 26, at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs. They set up open-air lab to process samples while the research building housing their laboratories and offices is reclaimed from Katrina. From the left, front, Guillermo Sanchez, John Anderson and Bill Dempster; second row, Dale Fremin, Harriet Perry, director of the Lab's fisheries center, Lisa Hendon and Darcie Dennis; back row, Matthew Reudelhuber, Eric Hoffmayer, Read Hendon, James "Tut" Warren and Jim Franks. (Photo by Linda Skupien)
Ousted from their research building by Katrina, fisheries biologists at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs have taken to the water and successfully maintained monthly sampling schedules for a long-term fisheries database. Sorting samples in a makeshift lab is graduate student Darcie Dennis, right. (Photos by Linda Skupien)