[cmdrost]

woah!! I must be moving up in the world....

a follow up email from the author of the original article about this same issue:

As I've reported in the past, many fisheries scientists believe coastal erosion to date may actually be priming the pump in terms of specks and reds because it improves the quality of habitat for many forage species (shrimp, menhaden, sardines, silversides, benthic community, etc), by increasing plankton and other invertebrate production, and increases the total acres of edge habitat important to young speckled trout. But eventually the growing acres of open saltwater will begin to dilute, then overwhelm the impact of the descreasing amount of marsh habitat eroding. They surmise that by the time we record a "trend" (which takes several years) in declining production the damage will have been so severe there will be little we can do about it. And, unfortuantely the rate of decline will only accelerate until it reaches a new balance with the remaining habitat. At current trend of wertlands loss being accelerated by sea level rise, by the middle of this century we will have very little habitat left. Louisiana fish production will drop to what we see now in Texas and Florida, or even below. You can get a few of the measureable sea level rise to mdate at this NOAA site. www.co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html

Thanks for reading the TP, and sharing your thoughts.