EAI is excited to announce some of its newest projects which expand both our service offerings and our geographic reach.
As part of the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hired Manson Construction Co. for the Cat Island Beach and Dune Fill Restoration Project in Harrison County, Mississippi. We are a subcontractor to Manson Construction to monitor sea turtle and shorebird nesting and turbidity. We are pleased to be providing the first daily, season-long sea turtle nesting data for Cat Island as an added benefit of this project. The number of loggerhead sea turtle nests documented during this project has exceeded all previous records for Cat Island as well as the state of Mississippi. In addition, our weekly migratory shorebird surveys are providing state and federal wildlife agencies with data regarding the species that utilize the offshore island as resting, foraging, and nesting habitat during the year. Our two photos show a hogey of Sandwich terns and an atypical wildlife track for a sea turtle nesting beach…do you know what made this track on the Cat Island beach?
Closer to our backyard, the City of Stuart has recently completed construction of the Haney Creek Stormwater Treatment Area and the Poppleton Creek Tidal Wetlands Creation and Restoration Project. As part of the City’s quality assurance plans, EAI was hired to evaluate the water quality improvements achieved by these projects. EAI will be collecting and analyzing water quality data via a combination of auto-samplers and surface water grab sampling through 2018.
Our Taxonomy Lab is expanding its reach and is processing samples collected from New England to the Gulf Coast! Our most recent sampling locations have come through a new partnership we are glad to have with Stantec. We are now processing ichthyoplankton, meroplankton, and benthic macroinvertebrate samples from off-shore, coastal, inshore, estuarine, and freshwater locations in Texas, Louisiana, the Gulf of Mexico, Georgia, both coasts of Florida, Virginia, and Connecticut.