Bear Grease - Ep. 361: Backwoods University - America's Amazon

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

When you hear words like mountain, canyon, or forest, what areas come to your mind first? I would be willing to bet your mind doesn't immediately go to a place below the surface of the water. Well get ready for a wild ride because we are about learn about one of the most commonly brought up, but severly understudied areas of the world, the gulf. Come with us as we hop aboard a research boat with marine biologist, Dr. Holley Muraco and learn more about this fascinating world that has so much left to be discovered. Connect with Lake Pickle and MeatEater Lake Pickle on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places, and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. On this episode, we're set in sail into uncharted waters. Literally, we're going to learn about one of the most recognizable but still unstudied areas. The Gulf of Mexico. You all know what I mean. Now, before we dive into the brackish water of this episode, I want to draw our attention. back to part of a previous conversation that I had with Steve Ronella when we were just about

to launch this podcast. It went like this. Talk about the podcast. What it's going to be like? So Backwood University, very wildlife biology-based, but also like the influence of humans on these animals, positive or negative. Got it. But the influence is usually very strong one way or the other. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's not so great. But that's what is kind of focusing in on. Yeah, nothing has escaped us.

No. Nothing has escaped us. I mean, truly, that seems to be the case. And honestly, with many of the subjects in previous episodes, I've had at least some knowledge or hunch of what our specific human influence was going in. But in this particular episode, in the topic of the Gulf and even more specifically, the Mississippi Sound, I didn't know how much the idea of nothing escaping us would come into play. I mean, don't get me wrong. I figured I would find something. I just, I didn't think it would be as shocking as this.

When you travel to our beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast, and it is beautiful and I love it. As you're traveling down Highway 90 and you're looking out at this beautiful white beach, the first thing you have to understand is that is, they call it a man-made beach, okay, it's real sand. But what happened was Mississippi did not have this pre-made beach. Christine beautiful Zen beach back in the day. It was a marsh. It was a basically multi-level estuary marsh land followed by oyster reefs. And so it was not something you could go walk on and have a beautiful beach day. And so the idea was let's let's have a beach because that's it's going to be beautiful. And it is and it is very nice. But what are we going to do with all that

estuary drainage that was there. What they did was they have stormwater pipes. So as you're driving down our Highway 90, and we're looking at our beautiful beaches, you're going to see these big black pipes ever so often. Those black pipes are storm drain runoff water. It funnels into the sound. And all it is, they took what used to just trickle in and filtered into a pipe scenario. And unfortunately, those pipes come from ever-increasing urban area, humans, right? And so, DEQ, Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, DMR, Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, everyone is working together to do water testing at those runoff pipes. And unfortunately, those runoff pipes have occasional bouts of high levels of E. coli and contaminants.

that is a problem that is very well known and then they make an announcement hey that beach is closed no one wants to hear a beach is closed so now they just say we don't advise to swim in water if you're immune compromised right now at this particular location

it's problematic on so many levels it's problematic for tourism it's problematic for the environment and the problem is not right there at the beach level it's somewhere up upstream you know And so when we can sort of come up with a solution to help filter that water before it just basically tap waters into the sound.

Which is what the estuaries were doing. Was it what the estuaries were doing? And then imagine also all those oyster reefs and oysters are amazing filters. We have created this environment, which we love. And it's beautiful. But now we're going to have to think a little bit of. about helping nature help us. So that is absolutely something that is on the radar down here

and is a problem that we are aware of. In the 1950s in efforts to generate tourism revenue and create recreational opportunities, the state of Mississippi undertook construction of what would be the largest man-made beach in the world. In present day, that title has since been taken over by some of the areas in Dubai, but it still ranks pretty high up there on the list.

over 26 miles of man-made beach. The real tragedy here is the marshes, wetlands, and estuaries that were there beforehand. Those things act as natural water filters, which is crucial, because this particular area is right where the Mississippi River, as well as several other rivers, dump directly into the Gulf, as well as mainland runoff from ever-growing urban areas. And I have to make a confession here. I'm a Mississippi native.

I have lived here in this state, virtually my whole life. And up until today, I had no idea that those beaches were constructed by the hand of man. And frankly, I'm shocked. And now my brain is reeling with so many different questions. What are the effects of this? Is this why beaches in Mississippi get such a schick for having dirty water? How does this affect the fisheries, our health? And ultimately, if I didn't know a fact about my own backyard that was as big as important as this, what else do I not know? The voice that you heard me talking to is Dr. Holly Morocco, a marine biologist, a passionate naturalist and conservationist, and a genuine savant on the Gulf. Before we dive into this full-fledged

conversation with Dr. Morocco, I think it's important that we experience the salty waters of the Gulf and Mississippi Sound for ourselves. All I can think about now is what that would have looked like. Mm-hmm. Imagine giant oyster reefs, you know? Yeah. Well, that's a real shame. Really is. Yeah, that's a real shame.

I'm now riding inside Dr. Morocco's research boat. We just left the marina out of past Christian, Mississippi, and we're headed to go search for dolphins. But as we shoot across the top of the choppy water, my eyes are constantly being drawn back to the white sandy beaches. I've seen these beaches my entire life. But now, I just can't look at it. of the same. It's really an odd feeling. It's like a watered down version of finding out Santa Claus isn't real. I don't really know what to do with it, to be honest. The average depth of the sound is 12 feet. No kidding. Very shallow area. And it's a wind-based tide system. So the winds are pushing things in

and out. As Dr. Morocco gives me some quick facts about the Mississippi Sound, all of us on the boat are constantly scanning the water trying to catch the glimpse of a dolphin. It wasn't too long before we saw dorsal fin break the surface of the water. Oh, look, to your right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see them, man. I'm going to put it in neutral and we can just sort of sit. There you go.

Another nice little. Oh, yeah. So this is all feeding behavior right now. When they're popping up and going back down that's feeding. Yep. So we got a lot of good action right in front of us. As we sit with the boat in neutral, looking at these dolphins, come up for a breath, some of the crew aboard begins taking pictures with a long lens camera.

My initial thought was they just wanted some good dolphin photos, but Dr. Morocco quickly explained to me that this is part of a very extensive project. The pictures are specifically targeted at the animal's dorsal fin. Unbeknownst to me, a dolphin can be identified by its dorsal fin, much like humans can be identified by their fingerprints. Each one is unique to the individual animal. So creating a catalog of photos over the years, they're able to learn more about population density, population health, certain skin diseases that can be indicators for water quality. It's really fascinating stuff. So do you think, like, so these, like you're caused the Arow Cat Island, do you probably see it the same dolphins, like multiple times over? Absolutely. And scientifically, we'll be able to

prove that once we have these matching fins, you know, over time. And this can, this is, this is Years of work will help us establish these types of things. But for now, we absolutely know we see the same dolphins. Gotcha. And this is really prime dolphin nursery habitat. Dolphins give birth out here. What time of year is that? And that's here we see most births in late February and March.

Gotcha. But it could happen any time of year. Okay. Dolphins are able to give birth any time. These will all be bottled nose dolphins. Bottom nose dolphins, yeah. And look at that bird. That is a really cool.

That's frigate bird. And frigates come in in the wind, but they're really cool. Frigot bird. After a few more dolphin viewings and quick lessons, we turned the boat around and headed back towards the marina. I learned very quickly that this is a subject that requires a much more in-depth conversation to even begin to understand it all. But before that, I want to share one more story from the boat ride that Dr. Morocco refers to is one of her favorite facts about Mississippi dolphins.

So I will tell you my favorite dolphins story about Mississippi dolphins. Okay. And that is that we have hardhead catfish. Yep. The catfish that live out here is saltwater catfish. Yep. And they are nasty. They have these spines that are like bony spines that will absolutely kill you.

It will hurt if you try to pick up a catfish. So in Florida, dolphins have washed the shore dead with catfish stuck in their esophagus. So they try to swallow a catfish, their spines go into the esophagus, and they're dead. They literally, death by catfish. Death by trying to eat a catfish. And that is not uncommon. There's our dolphins right there. Not uncommon.

When you walk the beaches here in Mississippi, you're going to see a catfish head randomly strown across the beaches. Our dolphins have learned to pop the heads off with the spines and eat the body of the catfish. No kidding. It is a very specific feeding technique that's been passed down from generation to generation of dolphins here. And so whenever you're on the beach and you see a catfish head, it's probably a twisted spine. That is a dolphin that has figured out how to fling off the head and eat. So our dolphins know how to eat catfish.

That's slick. We got smart dogs. We got smart dolphins. Take that, Florida. Our dolphins are smarter than yours. Anyways, I want to learn more about this subject. I think there's a much bigger story here than we realize, and Dr. Morocco is a perfect person to talk to about it. Tell me about the Mississippi Sound. I know that's a broad question.

So the Mississippi Sound basically extends from the Louisiana Mississippi line all the way over to the Alabama Mississippi line and it's bordered by the mainland in the north and then in the south we have these beautiful barrier islands many people have heard of

some folks may have been able to visit the ship island is one that people are able to visit and so these barrier islands and the northern mainland creates this amazing estuary habitat and that is the Mississippi Sound and I think one of the things makes it really remarkable is the sheer amount of river influence that it has. It's a,

it's a brackish estuary. The salinity varies, but we have a ton of river influences, including the Pascagoula River, of course the Mississippi River borders. We have the Mobile Delta on the other side, the Bay St. Louis, the Wolf River, the Jordan River. And so I think a lot of times people don't realize just the sheer amount of river influence that we have for the sound. Does all that river influence, does it have any, like, how much effect does that have on the different species that we have in the sound? Sure. Yeah, yeah.

So it's a dynamic habitat. It's a changing habitat because of that salinity flux. If you have a lot of rainfall or, you know, extra river runoff, you're going to have a lot more freshwater entering. or if you have a huge storm pushing Gulf water, you know, towards the mainland, you're going to have more salinity. This is the perfect habitat for oysters. Orsters need a nice balance of salinity changing. Shrimp do really well in this.

It's really good for sediment. Essentially, the Mississippi Sound is a perfect nursery habitat for young fish for, you know, all the fish that we like to fish for as well. There's a lot of food, a lot of things to eat. And so it's an incredibly dynamic habitat for lots of things. I found this significantly interesting. With influence from multiple rivers, the Mississippi Sound is what's referred to as brackish water, which basically means it falls somewhere in between freshwater and saltwater. And the ratio of salt water to freshwater can fluctuate depending on the river influence,

which makes for an extremely dynamic in constantly changing health. habitat. This results in a unique array of wildlife diversity in the area. Redfish, speckled trout, flounder, cobia, shrimps, sharks, and dolphins just to hit a few of the high notes. But let's be honest, that's something a lot of folks know. Let's focus in on something that not a lot of folks know, including myself before this interview. When we talk about managing game species on land, like deer or turkeys, a term that we hear come up all the time is habitat. We recognize it as being a key part in why species are able to survive in an area. But in terms of aquatic species, we tend to know a lot less about what is below the surface other than the fish themselves. Because just like land

animals, aquatic wildlife requires different habitats. And when I started asking Dr. Morocco about the habitat features of the Gulf, I really started to get my mind blown. As you make your way past the barrier islands, that's when you actually enter the Gulf. And as you are traveling south past the barrier islands, you're going to reach a canyon drop off, the DeSoto Canyon. And it's this incredibly amazing habitat where the Mississippi River has an influence, the depth, you know, the massive drop in depth where, you know, you're reaching thousands of feet, you know, from 30 to 60 feet down to hundreds to thousands of feet. And so it's a, it creates this incredible diversity of life.

in that area. I think we can all agree that when we hear the word canyon, most of us think about the ones that we see on land, which goes back to the point I was making earlier. Few of us think about the entire world that lives just below the surface of the salty water we call the ocean. The DeSoto Canyon, only 60 miles offshore, cuts through the Gulf's soft sloping continental shelf

and forms a giant underwater canyon that is over 3,000 feet deep. and forms an incredibly unique habitat that supports crazy amounts of marine life like corals, fish, and whales. Some scientists will tell you that we know less about the floor of the ocean than the surface of the moon. How crazy is that? I want to hear Dr. Morocco's take on some of the crazy marine life that lives around this canyon that most of us are completely unaware of.

Tell me about giant squid. So I was just absolutely. so excited because of course I pay attention to these science things being a scientist. I would be, it would be bad if I didn't pay attention, but I'm always excited when I hear about researchers from around the world that come to Gulfport, Mississippi to climb aboard the RV Point Sir, which is a research vessel. USM, you know, acquired this vessel not too terribly long ago. I think they've had it for maybe about 10 years. Don't quote me on that. They acquired this vessel from Monterey, California. They brought it over, and this boat went to work. And it booked solid. People

that want to study the Gulf, come to Gulfport, Mississippi to hop aboard this vessel. And so when I was familiar with these giant squid researchers that had been working in Japan, and they had been able to develop a lure that was attracting a giant squid. And I was like, that's cool. And then this researcher, when they climbed aboard the Point Sur, and then they put the lure right at that DeSoto Canyon right there, off of Mississippi and Louisiana, don't you know, really quickly, a huge giant squid comes up to their lure,

and they got it on video. A living giant squid, the first. one ever in North American waters right there. And, you know, when you think about needle in a haystack, what are the chances? This is clearly something that is happening right there in our backyard. Yeah, you would think, I mean, you could presume, right, since if they, they were able to pull that off relatively quickly, like, hey, that maybe means there's more of them down there, not just the only one swimming around. It was like, oh, hey. Right. Oh, hey, just so happened to be there. No, absolutely. You know, that statistically, that means that we are, you know, there is some incredible habitat for giant squid.

And obviously, these cephal pods like octopus and squid. And so, very, very exciting. It's something that we can be very proud of collectively as coastal researchers to say, you know, that we can provide this. And it's something that we need to, you know, I just, we can take ownership of these things, you know. We can be very proud. Our southern states have some incredible marine biodiversity that we can take ownership of. Allow me to blow y'all's mind for a second. Giant squid, a thought to be exceedingly rare marine animal.

These things have been known to grow up to 43 feet in length and are rarely ever observed alive. And the only one ever photographed in North American waters just happened to take place 60 miles off the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the DeSoto Canyon. Are you kidding me right now? And this is not even old news. This happened just around five years ago, and I'm not even done yet. Guess what else is swimming around in these waters? How crazy is it that you could technically potentially have a well-watching tour leave out of Mississippi to go well-watching, which is just absolutely insane? Okay, so it's a little bit harder than that.

But the truth is, we have a resident population of sperm whales that live off of our shores, and it ranges anywhere from, you know, 50 to 80 miles. They're living at that canyon drop-off area, that DeSoto Canyon, where the Mississippi, the mouth drains into the Gulf. And we know they're there, they live there. Studies have been few and far between, so we don't have a full understanding of exactly how they utilize the habitat, but we do know that we see moms and calves, we see, you know, them there year-round. And so with, you know, it's something that we need to do a better job of studying and understanding, especially as the Mississippi River dynamics are in constant flux and change

and the nutrients that are going in that are potentially feeding the animals that these sperm wells are living off of. we need to understand all of that now, you know, before something changes or if we look at it now and realize that, you know, potentially we are putting things into the water that don't need to be there, that are not helping this particular population of sperm wells. How big are these things? So a sperm well is the largest toothed well. And so, a little science, quick biology science lesson. When you think of the big whales, most of the time you're thinking of something that is a filter feeder. They have the baleen.

Many people remember that from school where they filter these tiny little krill or little microscopic creatures. They filter it through those plates. And they feed that way. So the big giant blue whales and humpback whales. But sperm whales actually have teeth. They are toothed whales, and they are the largest. And they're, you know, as long as a school bus. And just, it's absolutely, you know, an incredible animal that was very important back in the whaling days.

When people were, you know, harvesting whales for energy, sperm wells were one of the most important ones that they did. Another quick fun fact. We had a whaling industry in the Gulf. Do we really? We sure did. In the Gulf. In the Gulf. Like going out of the Midwest?

Mississippi even? Going out of Mississippi, Louisiana and going down there and literally harpooning sperm whales in the Gulf. I know. I've been doing as much digging as I can and not being a historian. I haven't necessarily had the time or energy, but it's been, I've done enough to know that how crazy is it that we had whaling here? Raise your hand if you knew there was a resident population of sperm wells right off the Mississippi coast. Raise your hand if you knew there was once a whaling industry that operated out of Mississippi and Louisiana. I know y'all can't see me right now, but rest assured, my hand is not raised.

I had no idea, and this stuff is blowing my mind. Be on the lookout for a future episode diving into that whaling industry, but for now, I've got to learn more about this underwater world that apparently I know nothing about. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls, and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen.

But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

There are mountains and canyons and forests and different systems that are living, there and everything is working together to survive. One of my favorite interests that's fairly local is a mountain called Mountaintop Bank Reef, literally Mountain Top Bank Reef. And it is located south of the barrier islands. It's about 80 miles offshore of Mississippi before the canyon drop off. We have a deep sea coral reef called Mountain Top Bank Reef. And USM was out doing some exploration, just bitometry looking at things, and they accidentally stumbled upon this coral reef that we have off of our, you know, off of our mainland. And it's incredible. It's a mountain that extends up, it's about 200 feet below the water surface, and it goes down about 400 feet. But it is

a literal mountain, and we have coral growing on it. And it's something that I'm very, very inspired to want to go take a closer look at. So you're saying that USM figured out that that was there. Yes. When did that happen? I think it was like 2019. It's really recent. Okay. So that affirms what I was thinking is it's like I hear prepping for this episode and like

just kind of getting curious about the ocean and marine biology, all that stuff. And all I heard from several different resources and different individual researchers and biologists are like, man, there's just so much we don't know. So much. And so you're talking about. within our own, like, like basically in our backyard, there was an entire... An entire coral reef. And mountain that we just found in 2019.

That we just found. Yep. Yeah. It's incredible. That's crazy. Absolutely. I'm going to ask, it might be a silly question. Like, other than, other than like the physical barrier of like it's, it's a lot easier

for us to go find a terrestrial mountain. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, observe something on land. Like, is there any more outline reasons why we don't know as much about this kind of stuff or why it's there stuff like that still undiscovered? You know, I think we, the Gulf has received a lot of interest for what we can extract from it. So from the, you know, extracting oil, natural gas, things like that. And so there's been quite a lot of studies to understand the underlying methametry of the, you know, gulf and the depths. And so we actually have a lot of good baseline data, but it is just very much,

it's this depth, it's this type of, you know, of structure. It's something that would be good, you know, to drill or not good to drill. Aside from that, these more biology, ecology things have not received the same attention. And so this particular coral reef had gone unknown simply because no one had ever actually looked. They had done the sonar scans. They had understood that this was something that was there. But until USM went down with an ROV, an ROV is a remote-operated vehicle,

a super fancy term for basically a robot that goes down with a camera, that's when they got visual eyes on it. And so one of my grants, my more recent grants, is I've actually applied to get myself an ROV that I can take out because sometimes you just need to put eyeballs on things. Yeah. And that's exactly what it was. It was something as simple as, let's just go look at that.

And they did. And sure enough, wow, we have this incredible ecosystem right there. The few corals that they were able to identify are more of the deep sea coral, which is something that's even more unknown than when we think of these tropical reefs. So there's new species that will ultimately be discovered if someone goes in looks. It's, you know, it's very pristine habitat. But at the same time, as they were traveling over in some of the documentation that they shared with the media, there was some marine debris laying on this reef. And so, of course, you know, we can't escape that, I don't believe. But

this is why we need to study these things. This is, now is the time to go down there and figure out, you know, let's understand its role. There's a researcher over in Alabama who coined the Mobile Tintal Delta as America's Amazon. Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, we have so much river influence. We are literally America's Amazon right here because we have such incredible biodiversity. And it's something that that term, coining that term, really, helps people grasp the sheer amazingness that this is. We are America's Amazon, and this is important. I want us to think back a few episodes when we were talking with the Black Bear

biologist Anthony Ballard about some of the controversies surrounding the Black Bear recovery in Mississippi. He said in so many words that we as humans have a habit of looking at wildlife in terms of what can it do for me. And let me be clear, I'm not here at all to try and demonize humans using natural resources. For one, that would be super hypocritical of me. And two, we need our natural resources for a long list of reasons. I'm simply saying that we don't just do that with wildlife. We do that with our land and our water as well.

And evidence would heavily suggest that we sometimes can think about that way too acutely, too narrowly, so narrowly that we sometimes don't think about the down-the-road consequences. A perfect example of this would be the prior mentioned man-made beaches of Mississippi. The land wasn't serving us the way that we wanted it to, so we physically constructed a beach, and in doing so, we ripped out the estuaries, and that decision affects the overall quality of the Mississippi Sound and the Gulf to this very day. And now, Dr. Morocco was telling us that much of the reason that there is still so much unknown in this area

is that we haven't looked into it and studied it much beyond reasons that would serve us. What can we extract from it? And again, just to emphasize, I am not proposing that we shouldn't extract things that we need. I'm simply saying maybe we should consider getting more of a big picture view of this entire ecosystem, how it operates and the role it plays.

Doing this would allow us to make much more informed decisions and how we can still get what natural resources we need without ruining something vital in the process. Y'all know the old saying, don't throw out the baby with the Gulf water, or something like that. Kudos to the occasional scientist who has tried to bring attention to these things. And our federal partners, Noah, the great Keith Mullen, worked for Noah for many years. And he's been out there publishing papers and working hard and trying to explain these things. But outside of that, we have not had the capacity in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama to conduct these studies.

And it's mostly because most people don't even know it's there. And so one of the things that I'm trying to do here at Mississippi State is say, these things are there and we need to take ownership of it and we need to build that capacity so that we can study it. We have all this there. We have all this diversity. we have all these different marine mammals. We haven't even talked about dolphins. Yeah. Why?

Why do we need to take ownership of it? You know, we definitely place value, you know, in Mississippi on those things that we can hunt, our fish, which is very important. And I get it. And outside of the things that you can hunt and fish, sometimes they don't get as much attention. And that is the question. Well, what is it going to do for me? me. And so my program is called Coastal One Health. And what I am doing is utilizing these marine mammals as the canary in the coal mine. And by studying them and understanding their health and how well they're

doing, they are telling us how well the environment is doing. And by studying it, we can not only help ourselves and the health of humans, but we can use that to understand the health environment. environment? And is there something that we can do to to improve? Are there, you know, things that we can do to to help these animals do better? It's ultimately that will help us. Yeah. How, I mean, what's the the state of the Gulf, the Mississippi Sound? Like, are we healthy? Are we, do we need, are we not healthy? Where are we at? Well, unfortunately, there's not a simple answer for that. We, are facing numerous challenges. You know, the oil spill didn't do us any favors.

I wouldn't imagine so. So, you know, as horrible as the oil spill was, that really launched a effort for these southern states to take a look at the biology and the health of the environment. And I can honestly say before the oil spill, there was not nearly as much opportunity to study these things. And so since then, we realized that we are dealing with aftermath of oil spill, but we're also gaining a better understanding of what all of this river runoff is doing into the Gulf. And so a lot of this runoff is going to have negative human effects.

These are things that once we understand exactly what is coming into our water, be it pollutants, agricultural runoff, antibiotics, bacterial pathogens, then we can go to that source and say, is there a way that we can reduce this amount of runoff going into our Gulf? And I see us right now in that position. We are in the still data gathering position, still trying to understand the big picture of what's happening. And so once we keep supporting these researchers, keep supporting the folks that are down here working hard, and then we'll be able to come up with some solutions.

We can all coexist. We have an amazing, amazing place down here for fishermen, be it commercial or recreational. We have, you know, incredible habitat. We have all of these dolphins. We can all survive together. We can all do well together. And so that's where I really appreciate the fishermen. And then I also am very appreciative of our commercial shrimpers, particularly,

that especially our artisanal, these local shrimpers who are working so hard to make a living and, you know, shrimping for this fresh Gulf shrimp, you know, highly supportive of them. But what's fascinating to me is we have dolphins, our dolphins that live out in the sound. generation after generation have been chasing shrimp boats. These mama dolphins are not dumb. They teach their young how to safely chase the shrimp boat, so to speak. And I'm very fascinated in that interaction that these dolphins are benefiting from these shrimpers because of the bycatch or, you know, as they're stirring up the sediment and fish

are moving, these dolphins can take advantage of it. And so I'm very excited to learn more knowledge. about that and study those interactions, but also show this is a coexistence example. Some people are like, if humans just disappeared, everything would be fine. Okay. In nature, sure. You can't think like that, though. You cannot think like that. And I don't like to think like that. I, you know, we're here. We deserve a space in this planet as well. But we can also take advantage and understand, especially the dolphin fishing coexistence to say, all right, what can we learn about this coexistence situation?

These dolphins have learned this, and these fishermen know these dolphins. We need more research. It's a big place. There's room for more research, and there's no reason why we can't have our Mississippi kids and students who have this dream of studying dolphins, why they cannot graduate from one of our universities, and we can put them to work, studying dolphins in the sound. And there's just seemingly a lot for us to figure out. Like, I was like a whole lot.

There's so, so, so much. If I were just say, you know, look into the future, strip away all worry and just leave me with optimism. Sure. What does this program look like? What does the Mississippi Sound look like? Yeah. What does the overall health of the Gulf look like? Sure.

Yeah. No, what I would love to envision is a little bit of a, mindset change. In the terrestrial world, it's a growing momentum. People are starting to grasp the concept of native plants. Yep. And how native plants serve the health of the environment better than non-native plants.

Something as simple as that. So you have a home in a suburb. You have this lawn that you have to put pesticides on, you have to put fertilizer on, you have to use water on. to create this sort of green stamp, you know, that is considered beautiful still by most people. We may have to change our mindset where maybe beautiful looks a little different than what we think.

And so where I take that is with our Gulf Coast. We see beautiful, pristine zen white sand is beautiful. And it is. It has its beauty. but we're probably going to have to give nature back a few of those areas to be able to do its filtering work for us. And when we look at those areas, there's going to be marsh grass, and there's going to be tidal surges that are going to not always look pretty.

Areas where we don't just grade it to have these perfect zen lines, where we allow the benthic invertebrates to do their thing. And so my vision is, is we drive down 90, we're going to have some of that beautiful sand, but we're going to also have marsh back. Diversity. Some diversity. And we're going to have people understanding the beauty of that biodiversity. How cool is it to be able to take a walk through a nature marsh, you know, next to a beach and see all of the wildlife in it? With the understanding that it's supposed to be there.

It's supposed to be there. I believe. I believe that we can utilize the resources, humans, and we can provide a healthy environment for these creatures to survive as well. And we can all coexist. There's a balance to it. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not all doom and glue. You know, it's sometimes it's really difficult and you can go down some crazy, scary rabbit holes. But I do believe, I'm approaching this from the standpoint of we're all in this together and we are smart and we can all do this together. Yeah. So you're going out at glass half full. Absolutely. Absolutely. Otherwise, I think I would probably not be able to do this job. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University, as well as bear grease

in this country life. And I want to give a big shout out to Onyx Hunt for making this podcast possible. If you like this episode, share it with somebody that you bet had no idea that we had giant squid swimming around in North American waters. And stick around, because if this podcast was the Gulf, we've only gone three feet below the surface. there's a whole lot more on the way. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not. going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps GameCalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.