Dauphin Island Sea Lab Summer Students Volunteer To Help Build Living Shoreline Project

Mobile AL

27 June, 2022

10:11 PM

Description

Press release from the Estuarium at Dauphin Island Sea Lab: June 27, 2022 Dauphin Island Sea Lab summer school students helped build a living shoreline on the bayfront in Mobile. Murphy High School teacher Sharon Delchamps led the project which is a partnership between the Alabama Coastal Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the University of South Alabama. The project is funded by a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant. Delchamps said a friend introduced her to Sharon and Ricky Dixon. The couple was looking to prevent erosion on their bayfront property. Before COVID shut the world down in Spring 2020, Delchamps gathered a team that included Murphy High School to build a reef along the Dixon's bayfront property. The team built five reefs. Two years later, the team returned to add to the reef and prep to plant Spartina, which is a coastal marsh plant. The oyster castles and the Spartina will work together to protect from erosion. The 2022 team included DISL/REU students Rebecca Carwithen and Kenneth Murage, South Alabama students Cadie Barnes, Katie West, Georgia Vaughn, Houston Huges, Andrew Mills, Tabor Smith, and Nathaniel Roy, Fisheries Ecology Lab Research Assistant Trey Spearman, Bishop State's Dr. Kathleen Roberts, South Alabama Instructor Dr. Amy Sprinkle, and Delchamps. This press release was produced by the Estuarium at Dauphin Island Sea Lab. The views expressed here are the author's own.