Dauphin Island

Good News and Bad News.

The good news is the almost $7 million dollar Dauphin Island east end beach restoration project that brought in 325,000 cubic yards of sand is complete. The new beach is proving to be popular.

http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2016/03/no_alcohol_ban_for_dauphin_isl.html

The bad news is the free east end parking is limited and my favorite east end sheltered kayak launch has moved so far away from the now crowded parking area that it is not worth using anymore. Most of the formerly sandy shoreline is now a kayak un-launchable rock shoreline.

The new long rock shoreline is visible on the right. To launch at the sandy beach visible on the left side of the photo will require carrying the kayak across a painfully long stretch of new sand.

The north side of Little Dauphin Island Bay is enticing.

All the sand that was moved to Sand Island Lighthouse has been swept away.

The Mobile Bay ship channel is next to the lighthouse so you may get to some big ships up close while kayaking near the lighthouse. A porpoise or dolphin jumps out of the water while playing in the ship's bow wake.

Not much of a wake from this big ship hauling railroad cars.

The Fort Morgan ferry passes nearby as I head back across Mobile Bay on this Double Crosser kayak trip.

Pelicans flying nearby with an oil rig visible in the background.

Unique looking beach house.

Nifty looking plant sculpture.

07/30/2013 - Alligator Bayou

1) Someone enjoying a morning paddle on Dog River.

2) Dolphins in Dog River.

3) Fishing Spider.

4) An rather large alligator in Alligator Bayou.

5) Beach overcrowding.

6) Closeup of an Alien.

7) Alligator Bayou on a Hot puffy cloud summer day.

04/19/2012 - Dauphin Island

Dauphin Island is a rewarding place to paddle if you like to see a wide variety of birds and marine life. This was an enjoyable 5 hour paddle along Sand Island, over to Fort Morgan, and back to Dauphin Island. I need to get away from Mobile more often.

Header image is a photo of dolphins at play. They are great fun to watch and there were plenty of them around today.

Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) puts on summer programs for kids of all ages. These kids were on the Research Vessel Alabama Discovery with several educators. Note the dolphin near the boat.

I wonder if any of them got the photo of two dolphins almost hitting my kayak. Speaking of DISL, there is a big party being thrown at Tacky Jacks for support of DISL coming up on May 3rd. DISL has a lot of impact with school kids and is a good program to support.

A Ruddy Turnstone bird on an old stump.

These were some sandpiper type birds which I am not any good at identifying because they all look the same to me.

A Great Blue Heron.

The Red-Breasted Merganser is one of the fastest flying ducks there are. This one has a neat-o punked out hair-do.

Great Blue Herons walk around the beach like they own it.

Awkward! This Great Blue Heron kept trying to eat the bait fish locked in a plastic bag which it probably stole from someone's unattended fishing site. It kept trying to swallow the fish but the plastic was getting in the way. I intervened - chased off the heron, got the bag, opened it up, and threw the bait fish to the heron which eagerly gulped them down.

I believe this was a contract boat that transports workers that remove tar balls from the beaches. Nice job eh?

These is but one tar ball removal crew on Sand Island. Nice job eh?

I put a penny that I found next to some tar balls for size perspective. Tar balls of this size were all over the Fort Morgan beach. You're going to be paying people to clean these beaches for decades by way of higher gas prices. You don't actually think the oil cartel is going to use their profits to clean up the oil spill mess do you? One tar ball has a smiley face on it.

A lizard paid no attention to the tar balls.

One of the reasons I love to kayak around Dauphin Island and Sand Island is because of all the things you can see in the clear water.

Along side one of the Ship Channel markers was what appeared to be about a 2-foot long shark.

These pelicans were across from the Ferry ramp.

An Oyster Catcher.

Everyone is so nice at Dauphin Island - even the birds. Here is a seagull giving another seagull a back rub.

The black skimmer was saying, "I want a back rub too!" Based on the bulge in this one's abdomen, it may have had a back rub already.

07/07/2011 - Bayou Casotte

Header image is of a stream of pelicans on a journey. There were a lot of pelican clans headed west to east in this fashion.

1) Sunrise at the Bayou Casotte public boat ramp in Pascagoula, MS. It is the first time I launched from here.

2) Bayou Casotte plays host to a wide array of huge man made objects that dwarf a kayak.

3) Off the southeast tip of Bayou Casotte is the dreaded billion dollar Gulf LNG Energy terminal. Huge 160,000-cubic-meter ships will be transporting Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from Angola to this facility. It's been said that if a LNG ship is rammed by another vessel (terrorism), the resulting explosion would be equivalent to a small nuclear bomb. Operations of this LNG facility are expected to begin this year.

4) This couple is fishing near the Chevron Refinery effluent channel which flows into the Mississippi Sound.

5) A shrimp jumps through the air. Much of the Chevron Refinery property is undeveloped wetlands. There are many little inlets that wind around in the wetlands. The objective today was to go up one of these little streams with hopes of reaching a large salt flat southeast of the refinery, but it got too narrow and shallow. Objective aborted.

6) So, I removed all the shrimp that had jumped into the kayak, turned around and headed back to Bayou Casotte.

7) This oil tanker was pumping out a powerful steam of water. All the more reason why to stay far away from large ships. I should have been farther away myself.

8) I was surprised to find dolphins up in this major shipping channel.

05/10/2011 - Dauphin Island West End

Launch: Bayou la Batre Public Launch
Launch Cost: Free
Destination: I have been kayaking for ten years and have never been to the west end of Dauphin Island. Today is the day and the plan was to do an 11 mile crossing from Bayou La Batre. It is an easy trek - just follow the channel markers down to #10 and then you'll see where to go from there. There is always a marker in view that you can aim for which is good because you have to paddle for about two hours before the island is visible on the horizon. Check out the marine markers that go from Bayou La Batre to near the tip of Dauphin Island (west end) - click here.
Distance: 25.6 miles (round trip)
Pedal time: 6-1/4 hours
Weather: 70-85 degrees. Winds out of the southwest 5-10. Current minimal, tide low at start. Water temp about 78 degrees. Seas 1-2 at the start and eventually slicking off.
GPS Track: To view or download the GPS track of this trip, Click Here.

Header Image

1) Sunrise on Portersville Bay.

2) Phung must be someone special to someone.

3) Saw over a half dozen waterspouts in the early stage of forming - none ever fully developed. I was fighting a little wind and chop when I began the crossing.

4) By the time I reached Dauphin Island the winds had died down and the waters smoothed out. Do you know what the two red diamonds mean and the letter "P"? Marine markers can be helpful in offshore kayak navigation. For a good online marine chart map which shows this Petit Bois Pass Light "P", Click Here.

5) I thought the west end of Dauphin Island had trees but it had none.

6) Looking back toward Bayou La Batre. Waters here had a nice green hue to it. Didn't see very many birds which was surprising.

7) The top horseshoe crab had a small hermit crab crawling on the edge of it.

8) Stingrays were abundant. Here three of them glide under the nose of the kayak. It is awesome to kayak the shallow waters of barrier islands.

9) Some dolphin capers made this trip a little more memorable. This one jumped completely out of the water right in front of me.

10) On the return trip there was no wind and it was so hot sweat poured from me! The forecast called for no wind in the morning and lots of wind in the afternoon - turned out to be the exact opposite. Good thing I carried plenty of fluid.

11) There are no oil spill clean-up crews working the West side of Dauphin Island. Still, it took about ten minutes to find any tar ball masses.

12) In another timed period of 10 minutes I picked up over a hundred plastic bottle caps. The problem of tar balls is minuscule compared to the ginormous plastic pollution problem. BP was responsible for its oil spill so why aren't the plastic bottle manufacturers or public responsible for getting the plastic cleaned up? We need a plastic bottle deposit bill NOW. We need tougher litter pollution laws.

13) It has been about eight months since I kayaked in Bayou La Trash - no change - it is still as trashy as ever. 

14) Those pink and yellow pom-pon like items on the right side of the photo look like they came from old oil booms.