The Place
When we are at the beach, we like to save an indoor activity
for the inevitable rainy day. On
Saturday it rained, so we went to visit the Estuarium, part of the Dauphin
Island Sea Lab. The Dauphin Island Sea
Lab, located next door to our campground, is Alabama’s marine education and
research center.
The Adventure
The Estuarium tells the story of the very diverse Mobile Bay
Estuary. It starts in the Delta where the
Mobile and Tensaw Rivers converge creating marsh areas and bringing huge
quantities of water from the watershed that covers all of Alabama and pieces of
surrounding states. The Mobile Bay
Estuary is the 4th largest estuary in the US by volume of water that
flows out of it. This fresh water then
travels through Mobile Bay itself, past the Barrier Islands and into the Gulf
of Mexico. Each of the 4 regions has
unique eco-systems and creatures. The
Estuarium has tanks of fish and other animals and interesting displays telling
the story of the regions. I didn’t know
there were sea horses in Mobile Bay, but there are. Go figure.
There is a touch tank where you can touch Rays, Sharks and a
Horseshoe Crab. We saw the Horseshoe
Crab swimming backstroke, which we’ve never seen before, though we’ve seen lots
of the animals in the Chesapeake Bay. We
asked their caretaker and she said that it is unique to this individual animal,
and it may be because the crab feels safe from predators in the tank. We caught a picture of this unusual event.
We learned about the “Fertile Crescent” in the Gulf of
Mexico, an area with unusually high seafood production because of the nutrients
in the waters from the Mobile Bay and Mississippi watersheds. Currents
in the Gulf move this water from east to west, forming the “Fertile Crescent”. There was also an exhibit about the BP oil
spill, which affected Dauphin Island, and which took place in this “Fertile
Crescent”. The exhibit describes some of
the research being done by Sea Lab scientists to study the impact of the oil
spill on this wildlife.
If you visit the Estuarium, bring your credit card because
the gift shop is better than usual!
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