At roughly 31 miles long and 11 miles wide, Mobile Bay in southern Alabama is the 6th largest saltwater estuary in the U.S., and home to some of the best redfish, sea trout and flounder fishing in the Gulf. With an average depth of 10 feet, the lush habitat and large food web of Mobile Bay offers a nice mixture of fishing opportunities. From Spanish mackerel and tripletail to sight fishing seatrout and bull redfish in the shallow grass, it’s all’s not ire’ in open water.

A recent project by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (ACOE) to deepen the Mobile Bay shipping channel from 45 feet to 50 feet to allow larger container ships into the port has been wreaking havoc on the bay’s habitat and fisheries. The initial phase of the project which is to end in March 2025, has dumped more than 4 million cubic yards of mud into the waters of Mobile Bay since 2020, turning the once clear waters a dusky grey and blanketing the flats, seagrasses and oyster habitats with silt.

The dredging silt bomb has already impacted the bay’s food web, as commercial and recreational fishermen are pointing to the noticeable decrease in shrimp and seatrout populations. As a rule, fishermen who make a living on any body of water are the veritable “canaries in the coal mine,” and the first to see the major declines before the public become aware.
“The mud from the dredge pipes is miles away from the ship channel,” explained Mobile fishing guide and Bajío Pro, Richard Rutland. “They push the outflow pipe around so different areas of the bay are getting all that silt. We’re already seeing areas that were great spots to fish are now dead zones.”
“There’s a few places that used to be great oyster beds that are now covered with feet of mud. Once we start losing the habitat, the juvenile fish, shrimp and crabs will have nowhere to live, breed and hide,” said Rutland.
Pushing for the project is The Alabama Port Authority, which says increasing the depth of the shipping channel will allow larger ships to enter the Port of Mobile, which is the state’s largest economic driver at around $100 billion in container storage business. The overall project is expected to last around 20 years and over that time would dump and estimated 90 million cubic yards of mud into the waters of Mobile Bay.
But there are alternatives. Up until 2012, mud wasn’t even allowed to be dumped into Mobile Bay, but when the shipping channel became channelized, an emergency permission to dredge the channel and dump the mud into the bay was implemented. Over time, that temporary approval in 2012 became permanent, likely because it reduced project costs.

Under the current project, the ACOE is mandated to utilize at least 70% of the dredge material for beneficial purposes, such as rebuilding and supporting the nearby Dauphin Island Causeway and adding support to existing shorelines. But a large portion of the dredged material is considered “not suitable” for those projects, and is thus pumped out through the dredge pipes and into the open waters of Mobile Bay causing long-term destruction to the habitat.

It's an obvious case of profit driven habitat destruction, but there is a solution, which is to force the ACOE to stop pumping mud into the bay and utilize the mud for restoration projects and find locations on land to dispose of the unusable sediment. You can help, by going to https://mobilebaykeeper.org/programs/shipping-channel/ and filling out a request to our federal legislators requesting an end to federal mud dumping in Mobile Bay.

There’s a solution that will still allow the port to grow, the channel to be dug out and the waters of Mobile Bay to remain pristine. Please join us in helping to protect our shallows.

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