Marine Sportfish Tagging 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. Our main goal is to use a standardized tagging approach to address multiple fishery issues in multiple areas of the Pontchartrain Basin. We have combined five separate tagging projects that will benefit from sharing personnel and equipment in accomplishing each of their goals. The five projects are:
1. the development of a marine sport fish tag and recapture program for the Pontchartrain Basin;
2. assessing site fidelity and habitat use by recreational fishes at artificial reefs in Lake Pontchartrain;
3. determining bycatch impacts and trophic responses of Lake Borgne catfish species;
4. testing possible nursery and pupping habitats of lemon sharks at the Chandeleur Islands; and
5. measuring interactions and refuge use by largemouth bass and the invasive Rio Grande cichlid.

The goal of the marine sport fish tag project is to build on the success of the Recreational Fisheries Research Institute, Inc. (RFRI) in developing and implementing a tagging program in the Barataria Basin and begin a similarly successful program in the Pontchartrain Basin. This program will gather data through the use of Pontchartrain Basin anglers to improve understanding of marine sport fish movements and patterns of habitat use, age structure, growth and mortality rates, estimates of population size, and rates of immigration and emigration. The goal of the artificial reef project is to tag recreational fishes at the reefs and, through recapture, determine how much these fishes use and rely on these habitats. Data generated by this project can be used as evidence of the relative ecological value of these structures.

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