croaker and spot), shrimp, crabs and 

 oysters, in decreasing order by volume. 

 Industrial pet food represents a sig- 

 nificant volume of additional finfish 

 which are not reported. Fishery harvest 

 also includes spotted and white sea 

 trout, flounder, red drum, red snapper, 

 spiny lobster, and squid (Mcllwain 

 1981). Most of these fishery products 

 are landed in the Port of Pascagoula- 

 Moss Point (Mcllwain 1981), but the 

 proportion caught inside Mississippi 

 Sound is not reported. 



A large amount of sediment dredging 

 and spoil disposal occurs in Mississippi 

 Sound, primarily for navigation channels. 

 Gulf port, Biloxi, and Pascagoula each 

 have such channels extending across the 

 sound. In 197 7, the USACE was autho- 

 rized to conduct a study to determine 

 whether present and proposed dredging 

 activities in the gulf coast area could 

 be modified to reduce costs and improve 

 environmental quality. This (ongoing) 

 study is known as the Mississippi Sound 

 and Adjacent Areas Study (MSAAS) , and it 

 includes the area from Lake Borgne to 

 Mobile Bay (Waters 1981). A variety of 

 oceanographic parameters are being 

 examined (Parker 1981). 



Pascagoula River (Lytle and Lytle 1981). 

 A recent study of toxins in the near- 

 shore portion of Mississippi Sound 

 indicated that St. Louis Bay shows sig- 

 nificantly less influence of toxic 

 pollutants in sediments than the 

 Pascagoula River mouth (Lytle and Lytle 

 1981). 



PONTCHARTRAIN HYDROLOGIC UNIT (II) 



The Pontchartrain basin is the 

 largest of the seven basins. It occu- 

 pies most of the coastal land and water 

 between the Mississippi and Pearl Rivers. 

 The entire Pontchartrain drainage basin 

 is shown in Figure 42, which also 

 depicts the official MDPR study area 

 boundary. Table 10 shows habitat areas 

 and changes from 1955 to 1978. 



The most distinctive features of 

 the Pontchartrain basin are its large 

 estuarine open water and urban- 

 industrial habitats. The estuarine open 

 water habitat consists mainly of three 

 large, shallow, interconnected water- 

 bodies: Lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain, 

 and Borgne, that occupy the largest part 

 of the basin. 



In addition, a baseline survey of 

 the benthic community in the Sound is 

 being carried out. Preliminary results 

 from fall of 1980 indicate a much richer 

 macrofaunal community than is found in 

 Lake Pontchartrain. For example, a 

 total of 330 infaunal taxa (benthic 

 macrofauna) have been identified, with 

 an average abundance of 7,090 organ- 

 isms/m 2 (Vittor 1981). These animals 

 were numerically dominated by polychaete 

 worms and crustaceans. In Lake Pont- 

 chartrain only 31 species of macrofauna 

 were identified in a series of detailed 

 studies of the entire bottom community, 

 in which total abundance was dominated 

 by small gastropods (Bahr et al. 1980; 

 Sikora et al. 1981; Sikora and Sikora 

 1982). 



Industrial effects on Mississippi 

 Sound are presumably higher at the 

 eastern end of the estuary, near Mobile 

 Bay. The most heavily developed of the 

 Mississippi portion of the coast is the 



The urban and estuarine open water 

 habitats dominate the Pontchartrain 

 basin in a functional as well as an 

 areal sense. The urban-industrial hab- 

 itat includes primarily New Orleans and 

 its suburbs, with a small amount of 

 additional urbanized land scattered 

 around the basin. New Orleans is the 

 largest urban center in the MDPR, and 

 the only major city in the United States 

 that is located entirely in a flood 

 plain (Most of New Orleans is below sea 

 level). Large (and increasing) costs 

 are incurred to keep New Orleans dry 

 (Wagner and Durabb 1977). Levees must 

 be maintained, and large parts of the 

 city must be pumped dry after every 

 rainstorm. Why build a city on such an 

 inhospitable site? The answer is that 

 New Orleans was sited originally during 

 a relatively flood-free period, and on 

 an area of relatively high land (natural 

 levee) as close to the Gulf and to Lake 

 Pontchartrain as possible, to facilitate 

 ocean, river, and coastal commerce 



94 



