Spotted Seatrout Stable Isotope Project: This work is currently being funded by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries with Sport Fish Restoration dollars provided through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Federal Assistance Program.

We are currently examining the dietary habits of Spotted Seatrout, Cynoscion nebulosus, from three seperate estuaries in Louisiana. Samples of Seatrout were obtained from Lake Calcasieu, Barataria Bay and Lake Pontchartrain with the hopes of answering the question: "why do trout get larger in certain estuaries in Louisiana." Through the analysis of stable isotopes taken from the muscle tissue of these spotted seatrout, we will determine their primary dietary makeup. In other words; the trout are what they eat and we hope to decipher exactly what that is using this technique with the hopes of elucidating small differences in food web dynamics among the different estuaries.

Bayou St. John Fishery Resource Project: This work is currently being funded by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries with Sport Fish Restoration dollars provided through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Federal Assistance Program.

Managers of New Orleans’ City Park and Bayou St. John are currently developing plans to restore aquatic habitats such that the local fisheries are improved. Unfortunately, over the last half-century many of the shallow in-shore habitats within the Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area in southeastern Louisiana have been modified as a result of urban development (Penland et al. 2002). In the past, urban anglers could fish for redfish, spotted seatrout, Atlantic croaker, bluegill, and largemouth bass in these bayous and canals that now rarely, if ever, contain any noteworthy sport fishes. For example, Bayou St. John once produced the world's record sheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus) and had natural connections to nearby Lake Pontchartrain. Today, though, Bayou St. John’s sports fishery is presently under-utilized and a flood-control structure precludes movement of adult sport fishes from nearby Lake Pontchartrain. It is the hope of these managers that their restoration efforts will bring renewed interest to this unique urban fishery. If these fisheries are to be restored, a first and necessary step is to determine the current state of fishery resources. Without this information managers will be unable to determine the relative success of their efforts. Also, by assessing the entire pre-restoration fishery managers can better understand what potential forage resources (i.e., prey species) will be available for sport fishes. Therefore, the Nekton Research Laboratory has been conducting monthly fishery sampling of City Park and Bayou St. John since January 2006 with the goal of assessing populations of both sports fishes and potential forage species. Our hope is that this information will be used as baseline data to measure the success of ongoing habitat restoration efforts.