Contact: Alaina Dismukes
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擬ississippi State is tackling the issues of environmental restoration and climate resilience through impactful research programs, and now the university鈥檚 efforts to advance projects along Mississippi鈥檚 Gulf Coast will move forward with help from a bill recently signed by Gov. Tate Reeves.
The Evaluation and Monitoring of Marine Mammal and Sea Turtles Abundance, Population Health, Habitat Delineation, and Restoration program, or EM MMST鈥攁 project that falls under the university鈥檚 Global Center for Aquatic Health and Food Security, or GCAHFS鈥攊s gaining approximately $2 million to support its work studying the population dynamics of marine mammals and sea turtles, their health, and the delineation of their habitat. This work hopes to effectively understand and monitor the restoration and recovery of their populations. The grant is a subset of $100,192,527 in Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, or GOMESA, allocations.
鈥淭his GOMESA funding is important to Mississippi for maintaining the overall sustainability and economic stability of the Mississippi Gulf Coast,鈥 said Mark Lawrence, GCAHFS director and William L. Giles Distinguished Professor in 小黄书鈥檚 College of Veterinary Medicine and its Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences. 鈥淲e are extremely pleased that Mississippi recognizes the value of marine mammals and sea turtles in the Mississippi Sound and invests in monitoring and maintaining the health of these important species. We are honored that the state entrusts this investment to the experts in the 小黄书 GCAHFS.鈥
This funding also seeks to have a One Health approach, balancing the needs of people, animals and the environment, he explained.
鈥淭he EM MMST program is part of 小黄书 College of Veterinary Medicine鈥檚 overall One Health program for the Mississippi Gulf Coast,鈥 Lawrence said.聽鈥淎s predator species, marine mammals and sea turtles are important sentinel species for monitoring aquatic wildlife health in the Mississippi Sound. Their health reflects the overall environmental quality, and it reflects the food web on which marine mammals and sea turtles depend.
鈥淪ome of the environmental threats that can affect human health in the marine environment also affect marine mammals and sea turtles, so monitoring the health of these animals can protect people from environmental health hazards such as toxic algae blooms.聽We also evaluate the impacts of human interactions on the cause of death for marine mammals and sea turtles, which will enable improved co-existence of people and aquatic wildlife in the Mississippi Sound,鈥 he said.
The additional $2 million in the EM MMST program will aid in continued evaluation of the causes of marine mammal and sea turtle deaths related to the 2019 Bonnet Carre Spillway openings and also will support evaluation of marine mammal and sea turtle death trends in 2020-2023.
鈥淭he new funding will allow us to expand our investigation into evaluating the effects of different river sources on freshwater infusion into the Mississippi Sound,鈥 Lawrence said.
Previous EM MMST program funding enabled the first-ever genetic analysis of the area鈥檚 marine mammal and sea turtle populations, and the new funding will contribute to further data collection.
鈥淥ur previous work under the EM MMST program included developing methods to predict the most likely location where marine mammals and sea turtles died,鈥 Lawrence said. 鈥淭he new $2 million in funding will allow us to better refine this model to improve its accuracy, and then apply the model to achieve a more complete picture of where the animals died in the Mississippi Sound. Ultimately, the more we know, the better we can protect marine mammals and sea turtle species.鈥
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