Flotte’s Notes on

Mobile Bay

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Notes on Mobile Bay

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Notes on Mobile Bay and Alabama Environment

Notes on Mobile Bay and Alabama Wildlife

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Mobile Bay

Mobile Bay Channels

Mobile Bay Causeway

Mobile Bay Islands

Mobile Bay Lighthouses

Mobile Bar Pilots

Mobile Delta

Dog River

Environmental Concerns

Mobile Bay

· The Mobile River and Tensaw River empty into the northern end of the bay, making it an estuary. An Estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of water, having an open connection with the ocean, where freshwater from inland is mixed with saltwater from the sea.

· Dog River, Deer River, and East Fowl River empty into the western side of the bay, and Fish River and the Bon Secour Bay and River are on the eastern shore.

· The Mobile River is formed 45 miles north of Mobile by the joining of the Alabama River and Black Warrior/Tombigbee Rivers. The Mobile River serves as the gateway to the Tennessee/Tombigbee (Tenn-Tom) Waterway.

· The deepest areas of the bay are located within the shipping channel, sometimes in excess of 75 feet deep, but the average depth of the bay is only 10 feet, which is among the most shallow for a bay this size.

· It is approximately 32 miles north to south, 23 miles wide at its widest point, and about 10 miles wide at the City of Mobile.

· A combination of wind and tide delivers salty Gulf waters into the Bay from the south that mix with varying amounts of freshwater from the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. Due to the shallow nature of the bay, dynamic climatic conditions, and man-made hydrologic modifications salinity conditions in the Bay are remarkably variable.

· The Bay is influenced by daily diurnal tide changes that average a little less than a foot and a half, with maximum changes exceeding two and a half feet.

· The Mobile Bay Ferry moves passengers and autos between Dauphin Island and Fort Morgan.

· The sandbar at southeast side of the mouth of Mobile Bay has been called Dixey Bar for probably more than 100 years. The clipper ship Robert H. Dixey was struck by a hurricane in 1860. Nineteen lives were lost and the ship was destroyed on the bar that came to claim its name. The story is told in a book by L. Tracy Girdler entitled "An Antebellum Life at Sea," published in 1997. A subsequent hurricane created an island, "Dixey Island," which lasted on the charts until another storm washed it away, leaving only Dixey Bar.

Channels and Waterways

Mobile Bay Ship Channel

· Prior to the channel, Mobile Bay was too shallow for heavy ships so small steam-power vessels called lighters took millions of bales of cotton from Navy Cove to Mobile.

· Once onboard, the pilot would navigate the ship over the Mobile Bar to a position four miles northwest of Mobile Point known as the Lower Fleet Anchorage. The anchorage had to be used because the mouth of the Mobile River was too shallow for ocean-going ships. At the anchorage the ships would transfer cargo to or from small light draft vessels that could transit the upper bay.

· It was not until 1826 that the U.S. Congress authorized money for the development of a navigable channel in Mobile Bay.

· In the year 1831, Choctaw Pass at the mouth of the Mobile River was dredged to a depth of ten feet. Smaller ocean- going ships could now berth at the docks in the city.

· In 1870, congress authorized the first of many improvements to the port. The obstructions were removed, three lighthouses were built, and by 1876 the ship channel was dredged to a depth of thirteen feet. This was still too shallow for modern ocean-going steam freighters, so the anchorage was still used.

· In 1896, the channel was dredged to a depth of twenty-three feet. Finally the need to lighter the ships at the anchorage had ended.

· The current navigation channel maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provides safe navigational depth of 45 feet from the Gulf of Mexico to the mouth of the Mobile River. The 45-foot channel serves McDuffie Terminals located at the mouth of the river. The channel then becomes 40 foot deep and proceeds north to the Cochrane/Africatown Bridge passing over the Bankhead and Wallace tunnels.

Intracoastal Waterway

· In the southern edge of Mobile Bay, access is gained to the Intercoastal Waterway as it makes its way from St. Marks, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas.

· Military engineers built the channel through south Baldwin County in 1934; their goal was to create a protected shipping lane between Mobile and Pensacola that was safer to traverse than the open Gulf. Called the Foley Land Cut, the manmade segment of the Intracoastal Waterway between Oyster and Wolf bays was originally planned in the early 19th century. The 7-mile canal, however, took more than 100 years to come to fruition.

· The canal is maintained for barge traffic by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The agency is also tasked with permitting any marinas on the waterway's shoreline.

· Since 2004 the Intracoastal Waterway has been a center of residential and commercial development.

Pinto Pass

· In the late 1970s, the Corps spent $500,000 to $700,000 of tax payer money in the placement of an experimental floating dike across Pinto Pass, a tidally influenced river which runs from Battleship Park to Mobile River, and in 1800-1900s was navigable and a channel used for Mobile. – Myrt Jones

Mobile Bay Causeway

· Within the Delta, the Causeway prevents the exchange of water between a number of once open bays and the Gulf of Mexico.  Scientists believe that the modifications may have altered the ecological function and biodiversity of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Mobile Baykeeper, the Nature Conservancy, the Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL), and the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) and several others partnered in 2001 to study the effect that hydrological modifications have had on the natural flow of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta.

· Many of the Causeway’s buildings were wiped out by Katrina’s storm surge.

· Battleship Park sustained extensive damage of between $1.5 million and $2 million and the storm left the USS Alabama listing

Mobile Bay Islands

Gaillard Island

· Gaillard Island is an 1,300–acre triangle shaped island located two miles east of Theodore Industrial Park and approximately ten miles south of downtown Mobile.

· In 1979, an island was created from the silty sand dredged to create a ship channel between Mobile Bay and Theodore Industrial Park.

· Although the dredge spoil island was opposed by environmentalists, Dr. M. Wilson Gaillard, a Mobile dentist and conservationist, envisioned the island as a nesting haven for both shore and seabirds.

· By 1981, when the initial construction of the island was completed, birds were already visiting the island. Although locals affectionately refer to the island as Pelican Island, it was officially named for Dr. Gaillard.

· The island initially had a 35–acre planted marsh located along the northwest dike. Today, most of the marsh has washed away. The Island’s dikes, especially the east and south dikes are exposed to high wave and wind energies owing to long wind fetches and ship/barge wakes. To protect these dikes, the east and most of the south dikes have been riprapped with stone. In addition, planting was conducted behind floating tire breakwaters on the northwest dike, and plant rolls and erosion control matting have been utilized.

· Upon completion of the Island, numerous species of vegetation colonized different areas over the past decade. Saltmeadow cordgrass, saltmarsh bulrush, salt marsh cattail, and American threesquare naturally colonized behind berms, while several other species established themselves in the marsh. Smooth cordgrass was the only species that was planted. Lastly, the upland areas were seeded with different species of grasses and planted with a variety of both native and exotic trees. Only a few tree species have survived over time. It wasn’t until the early 1980’s when some of the vegetation had reached successional stages that wading birds were observed on the Island.

· In 1983, biologists discovered four brown pelicans nesting on Gaillard Island. At the time, this was a remarkable discovery because it marked the first nesting of this species in Alabama. Early in this century, the abundance of brown pelicans declined significantly due to hunting. The feathers from pelicans were used in women’s hats. Although laws were later passed protecting the pelican and other species from the plumage trade, another threat in the 1940’s was to have devastating effects. The wide spread use of the pesticide DDT decimated the local population up until 1957. Eventually ornithologists determined that DDT contaminated fish eaten by pelicans were responsible for producing very thin–shelled eggs. Although the brown pelican was placed on the Endangered Species List in 1970, it wasn’t until 1972 when DDT was banned that the brown pelican population saw a resurgence. During the 1970’s and 1980’s the population steadily increased and by 1985, the brown pelican had recovered so well, in part due to Gaillard Island, that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropped the species from the state’s endangered species list. In 1998 the brown pelican was removed from the Endangered Species List. By 1999, the size had grown to 5,200 pairs, with the numbers now between 4,000 and 5,000 pairs.

· Gaillard Island is important to thousands of birds representing 15 different species of skimmers, stilts, terns, pelicans, egrets, herons, ducks, and rails that take refuge or nest along the six miles of coastline offered by the Island. Gaillard Island is the only Alabama nesting site for caspian terns, sandwich terns, royal terns, and laughing gulls. The first recorded nesting of herring gulls occurred on Gaillard Island in 1986. In all, well over 10,000 nests have been recorded or estimated during the 1997 and 1998 surveys. The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has conducted annual surveys of the colonial nesting seabirds on Gaillard Island since 1988.

· The Island is managed with nesting seabirds in mind by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Alabama State Docks which owns the island.

· The Corps manages disposal to protect nesting birds. Five pipeline corridors on the island's southern end are used to deposit dredged material during nesting season. Outside that, any area on the island can be accessed. Dredged material is poured into the diked area and settles sloping toward the weir box in the north corner. While the material settles, the weir box allows clean water to drain into the bay.

· Source2: Gaillard Island: Seabird Haven, by Jeffrey C. Howe, Nature Photographer. District dredges up home for endangered bird, Tim Dugan, USACOE Mobile District

· The proposal was to come off the Mobile Ship Channel with another deep channel into the Theodore Industrial Park. A major problem was how to handle and dispose of the multimillions of cubic yards of dredged material from this huge project. The MBAS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service objected to placing the material in Mobile Bay, which would displace over five square miles of productive bay bottoms and heavily impact on water quality and hydrology of the bay. There were no recognitions or studies made on the potential that this island would become a paradise for birds, but that is what happened. Coastal Alabama had not had brown pelicans since the early 1900s. Four pair of pelicans found a home on the newly formed island, and, being endangered, their little fledglings put the COE on notice. One district engineer, in essence, said, "to hell with the birds, we're going to maintain the channel and place the material on the island." This individual was told to cease and desist or be put in jail. The Fish and Wildlife individual, Larry Goldman, enjoyed putting this fellow in the Corps on notice. In order for this huge island to be stabilized, the public tax monies that have been spent on bulkheads, [to] plant trees, [and] vegetation, etc., through these twenty years has probably been in the billions of dollars, a major "sink hole" for public monies. No one knows to what degree loss of bay bottoms has occurred with the sinking and spreading of this mass of dredged material across the Mobile Bay bottomlands. No one knows to what extent this loss has taken on the downward decline of our seafood catch. – Myrt Jones

Pinto Island

· Families settled on Pinto Island during the Depression, and squatted there as late as the 1990s.

· In 1826, Congress appropriated $10,000 to improve Pinto Pass and make it more accessible for large shipping vessels, according to ``Rivers of Alabama'' by John C. Goodrum. But during the Civil War, Confederates defending Mobile drove pilings in the waters of Choctaw Pass and filled old boats with stones and sunk them in Pinto Pass. In 1876, engineers reopened one of the channels, but the account doesn't say whether it was Choctaw or Pinto Pass.

· Officials can't say for sure when the pass closed. Resident J.U. Hamblin says it was a dredging company that lowered the water level from 9 feet to around 3 feet. ``A Louisiana company built this levee and it held one day and silted into this bayou and filled it up.'' But it still was a passageway from the Mobile River to the Mobile Bay. Then the elder Hamblin says the corps dammed it up at its east end, though a corps official expresses no knowledge of this. J.U. Hamblin says he wrote a letter to then-Gov. George Wallace, who referred him to the corps, which in turn sent its representative for a visit. – PR 4/16/96

Blakeley Island

· For years, the Alabama State Docks, through Bob Hope (director) and Bill Black, "leased" north and south Blakeley spoil areas from "rich owners." This was done routinely every year or two, costing untold amounts of tax payer monies in these agreements to have places for dredge material from Mobile harbor.

· Alcoa, in the 1950s, piped waste bauxite under the Mobile River to the six mud lakes with forty-foot dikes. The dikes constantly broke and the red mud (which was highly caustic) flowed into Polecat Bay. – Myrt Jones

McDuffie Island

· The Coast Guard's quarantine station was on McDuffie Island.

Gravine Island

· Gravine Island is an uninhabited island in the middle of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and reachable only by boat. But on the weekends, and particularly holiday weekends, up to a hundred boats crowd into a protected cove on the north end of the island. Sand was piled 25 feet high by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who needed a place to put dredge spoil. – PR 9/4/07

Gulf Barrier Islands

· The Barrier Islands of Alabama and Mississippi include Dauphin, Petit Bois (French "little forest"; pronounced "petty boy"), just over the Alabama line, Horn, Ship and Cat.

· The islands form the Mississippi Sound, a brackish estuary described by federal officials as the most "fertile" part of the Gulf of Mexico.

· Scientists say the islands are shrinking due to the impact of ship channel dredging

· Most have freshwater lakes that serve as a stopover for migratory birds and as a nesting ground for shorebirds.

· See Press-Register, June 15-16, 2008

Mobile Bay Lighthouses

· Middle Bay Lighthouse

· Sand Island Lighthouse

o Sand Island is located roughly three miles offshore from the primary Mobile Bay entrance. The island’s size exceeded 400 acres in the 1800s, but today, it is has shrunk to less than one acre.

o The first tower, 55 feet tall, was built in 1838. Another was built in 1859 but destroyed by the Confederates in 1862 during the Civil War when they discovered that Union troops were using the tower to spy on them. The current lighthouse of 132 feet was built in 1873 by architect Winslow Lewis. Throughout the 1890s and 1900s granite blocks were placed at the base of the tower to control erosion.

o Lighthouse keepers lost their lives in the Hurricane of 1906 and in 1919. In 1921, the lighthouse was automated, and the light was deactivated eleven years later. Since that time, the pile of granite blocks has managed to provide a secure footing for the lighthouse without further aid from man.

o The lighthouse was deactivated by the Coast Guard in 1933

o The second-order Fresnel lens was removed from the tower in 1971, and then placed on exhibit at the Fort Morgan museum the following year. In 1973, the 1925 keeper’s dwelling, which stood on iron pilings next to the tower, burned down.

o In 2001, the Alabama Historical Commission rejected an offer of the lighthouse, reasoning that it would cost too much to save. Fortunately, the Town of Dauphin Island stepped forward and obtained ownership of the lighthouse from the federal government in 2003.

o In 2006, a Safety Trip was made to the lighthouse to devise a safe manner for landing at the lighthouse and for climbing the tower in preparation for a planned engineering study of the lighthouse. Options for the lighthouse include moving it to nearby Dauphin Island or attempting to replenish tiny Sand Island and restore the lighthouse in situ.

o Captain Jim Hall offers trips to the lighthouse, or you can go on a Lighthouse/Shrimping/Dolphin tour with Action Outdoors. The lighthouse is not open to the public.

o Officials with the Alabama Lighthouse Association say the first major repairs will begin in 2008, funded by $320,000 in federal money. It would cost $1.3 million to fully secure the 132-foot-tall tower, according to an engineering report released this year, and millions of dollars more to make it accessible to visitors. Eventually, the association, which will continue fundraising for a full restoration, hopes to rebuild the surrounding island and open the tower to the public. – PR 12/25/07

· Mobile Point Lighthouse

· Alabama Lighthouse Association

Mobile Bar Pilots

· Mobile Bar Pilots navigate the bay’s sandbars for ships traversing Mobile Bay

· Throughout its history - even when it was under French, British and Spanish control - the mouth of Mobile Bay had its bar pilots. After the War of 1812, Americans took over as Bar Pilots.

· In 1818, shortly after the U.S. government settled pilotage rights to the Gulf waters with Spain, there were a half-dozen initial bar pilots, all young men from seafaring families.

· By 1822, bar pilots had established a base at Navy Cove - "Pilot Town"

· When an attentive pilot with good eyesight spotted a sail on the horizon, he'd run to his rowboat, and others chased after him, said Warren Norville, a Mobile Bay bar pilot descendant, historian and author. They'd race through the waves in their 18-foot yawls, aided by spritsails, to the arriving ship, and the first one aboard got the fare.

· In the year 1831, Choctaw Pass at the mouth of the Mobile River was dredged to a depth of ten feet. Smaller ocean- going ships could now berth at the docks in the city. A second pilotage system soon developed. The Bar Pilots would navigate the ships into the bay, and the Upper Bay Pilots would guide the ships to Mobile . By the 1840's, the races from Pilot Town had ended. The pilots realized that it was more efficient to stay out in the gulf and wait for a vessel than to stay in port. There was one problem, maintaining a boat big enough to handle the rough weather in the open sea was expensive. In 1843 four bar pilots found a solution. They formed a consortium and purchased a large pilot boat and took turns with the jobs. Within a decade four other consortiums had formed to operate on the Bar, meanwhile the Upper Bay pilots joined together to form one association.

· The fee was princely. The early pilots enriched themselves as well as the budding harbor in Mobile Bay. Some built fine homes in Mobile and summer homes in Point Clear. At the turn of the century, a pilot bringing in a ship with a 12-foot draft earned $42 a trip.

· When the War Between the States broke out in 1861, there were sixteen bar pilots and seven upper bay pilots working. Many of the pilot boats were used as blockade runners during the war. In fact, two of the bar pilots were captured and imprisoned for attempting to run the blockade.

o William T. Norville and "Black Bill" O'Conner, both from Pilot Town, were two of the more legendary blockade runners of the Civil War.

o When Norville the blockade runner was captured, Farragut offered him a pension, a nice home and cash to pilot the Union fleet during the Battle of Mobile Bay on Aug. 5, 1865. He refused, choosing prison instead, according to descendant Warren Norville.

o Bar pilot Jim Griffin assisted Farragut's fleet, according to a 1959 commemorative book for the sesquicentennial of Baldwin County's founding in 1809.

· During the Civil War, the Confederate Navy's Capt. Horace Hunley sought to develop the world's first submarine in Mobile. Navy Cove resident George Cook offered to try out the second of the three experimental vessels with the help of helmsmen William Norville and Andrew Dorgan. The bar pilots were deeply involved with these experiments.

· By the time the war ended in 1865, all of the prewar pilot boats had either been captured or scuttled during the conflict. The sixteen bar pilots joined forces and formed the Mobile Bar Pilots Association. They purchased two pilot boats.

· In 1896, the channel was dredged to a depth of twenty-three feet. Finally the need to lighter the ships at the anchorage had ended. That year the bar pilots and the upper bay pilots merged and formed the Mobile Bar and Bay Pilots Association. Because of tradition, the pilots still used the system of changing out pilots in the lower bay. It was deemed a better job to pilot the ships from the bay to the port, so the nine senior pilots became town pilots and the junior pilots served as bar pilots.

· Mobile became the base for bar pilots after a hurricane in 1906 destroyed Pilot Town, killing one 86-year-old pilot and the four children and wife of another.

· The Seaport Act of 1927 placed the Mobile Bar and Bay Pilots Association under the jurisdiction of the Alabama State Docks Commission. The commission decided to put the pilots on a paid salary. The next year the No.2 pilot boat was destroyed in a storm. Because the pilots were on a salary, they did not have the money to replace the boat. This forced a change in the pilots work schedule. Now only one pilot was used to make the full transit of the bay. After much lobbying, the legislature removed the pilots from the jurisdiction of the State Docks. On March 9, 1931 the twenty-two pilots met at the Master, Mate, and Pilots Union Hall and formed the modern Mobile Bar Pilots Association.

· Because ships were now only using one pilot to reach port, the Association had too many pilots. The pilots decided not to replace retiring pilots and their number gradually declined to fifteen. Because of improved communications, staying at the sea buoy was unnecessary. In 1965 the pilots opened their new pilot station on Dauphin Island and the old wooden sailing vessel Alabama was retired. Today the pilots still operate out of Dauphin Island . Two launches are stationed there to ferry pilots to and from the ships.

· In the 182 years that American bar pilots have steered boats in Mobile Bay, only two vessels have been lost with a bar pilot aboard.

· In the 1840s, they formed the Mobile Bar Pilots association, which today represents 12 pilots who bring in about 100 ships a month

· Bar pilots today go seven miles out in the Gulf on 48-foot powerboats

· In the past, a bar pilot position was hereditary. Today it is stated that nepotism among the bar pilots is a thing of the past. Of the last five men awarded apprenticeship, only one has had a bar pilot in his family. Three of the current 12 pilots are descendants of the captains who were at Pilot Town.

· The three-member Alabama Pilotage Commission, appointed by the governor, picks those admitted to the apprenticeship, the formal training for becoming a bar pilot. The commission also sets the rates controlled by the state.

Mobile Delta

· The Delta has been an important source of transportation and timber. In this century, industries have found it a convenient place in which to discharge wastewater, and worse.

· Residential sprawl is threatening the eastern edge of the Delta along the Blakeley River. Experts say that 1,000 homes along the edge of an estuary pose serious problems for the environment, more serious than industrial discharges or forest clearcuts.

· Private owners, including paper companies, timber companies and families, have traditionally been major landowners of the Delta, which is estimated at 200,000 acres.

o Kimberly-Clark Corp. was the main landholder in the Delta, until it put its land up for sale in 1999, with about 70,000 acres. Other significant owners include the Meaher family (more than 10,000 acres), AmSouth/Regions Bank and Alabama Power.

o In the 1980s Scott Paper Co. worked with North Carolina State University to develop a logging plan for sustainable harvest of tupelo pulpwood from Delta swamps. Because the land was too wet for modern logging equipment, Scott found that helicopters were the only practical means of removing the timber.

· Public ownership of Delta land has increased, but at a pace slower than conservationists had hoped for.

o Questions remain as to whether the tracts purchased were the best possible choices for protecting the Delta.

o As of 1999, The Coastal Land Trust retained about 5,000 acres in the Delta. The Corps of Engineers had 22,000 acres, all designated for wildlife management and public hunting. The Conservation Department owned about 16,000 acres for those same purposes.

o The federal agency overseeing conservation of the Delta is the Corps of Engineers, which systematically filled in