Mississippi Gulf Fishing Banks, Inc.
Activity Report for the Period
June 14, 2002 - July 11, 2002

Summary
During this period, there was 3 reef construction trips, 1 dive trip, and 1 piling maintenance trip. On June 18, a missing marker board was replaced at the FH-10 Middle Ground Site. On June 25, a trip was made with Kirk Loy of Mississippi Outdoors to obtain video footage. On July 3, 9, and 11, rubble was placed in FH-13 for the GCRL red snapper release project.

FH-10 Piling Maintenance and MS Outdoors Video Efforts
It had been reported that a marker board was missing from one side of the piling at FH-10, so one was ordered and it was replaced on June 18.
In on-going efforts to support Mississippi Outdoors, a trip was made to help obtain footage for a special series they are working on to show how a healthy Pascagoula River System helps the entire ecology all the way down to and including the Gulf of Mexico. Several dives were made and water visibility was decent allowing some good footage to be taken of schooling fish. Highlights included 2 separate encounters with a sea turtle and a dolphin.

GCRL Rubble Project in FH-13
Construction was performed by T&W Marine and Spotter operations by PRIMOFISH.COM. This project was approved last year to deploy four separate rubble reefs for the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory to support their red snapper rearing and release project. Last year they had trouble meeting their quota and had to allocate all the available red snapper to the reefs off Sarasota, Florida. Therefore, efforts were postponed until this year. Four sites were desired with coordinates determined by the GCRL and DMR as follows: NW 30°02.4'/88°32', NE 30°02.4'/88°30.5', SW 30°01'/88°32', SE 30°01'/88°30'. The first load was deployed on March 24, 2002 in the NW corner. Bad weather and then conflicting projects hampered efforts to deploy the remaining loads until July 3, 9, and 11. The coordinates and IDs for each of the loads are summarized below:

020324 Rubble GCRL-1 NW 263F13
Position: 30°02.380'N/88°32.003'W 12453.2/47032.5/29616.7
Drift to 30°02.403/88°32.018. The surrounding water depth was 74 feet with a minimum depth of 71 feet recorded. Predicted tide level was 0.6 feet with a range of -.6 to 1.0 feet.

020703 Rubble GCRL-2 NE 264F13
Position: 30°02.404'N/88°30.504'W 12468.4/47032.8-9/29631.8
The surrounding water depth was 72 feet with a minimum depth of 70 feet recorded. Predicted tide level was 1.0 feet with a range of 0.7 to 1.2 feet. Light wind and current going to the south.

020709 Rubble GCRL-3 SW 265F13
Position: 30°01.012'N/88°32.010'W 12453.3-2/47027.0-1/29611.1
The surrounding water depth was 81 feet with a minimum depth of 79 feet recorded. Predicted tide level was 2.0 feet with a range of -.5 to 2.4 feet. Moderate east wind with current running west.

020711 Rubble GCRL-4 SE 266F13
Position: 30°01.002'N/88°30.011'W 12473.6-5/47027.1-0/29630.7
Drift to 30°01.016/88°30.030. The surrounding water depth was 82 feet with a minimum depth of 80 feet recorded. Predicted tide level was 2.4 feet with a range of -.5 to 2.5 feet. Light Winds, Southeast Swells.







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EMail Author: Mark@primofish.com