Diversions and dolphins colliding

Two major sediment diversions - called the Mid-Barataria and the Mid-Breton – are scheduled for construction along the Mississippi River over the next four years. They represent the most ambitious effort yet to feed Louisiana's marshes with material it needs to build back the state's diminishing coastline. But, with 2019’s record high-water events on the river, there are questions about introducing so much diverted freshwater – up to 150,000 cubic feet per second - into new areas, and what it may for future of bottlenose dolphins. The Bonnet Carre Spillway was open for much of the past year, sending tens of thousands of cubic feet of water per second into Lake Pontchartrain and eventually into the Gulf, leaving a dead zone, algal blooms and devastated fisheries. Roughly 300 dolphins have washed ashore along beaches in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Scientists are trying to decipher the relationship between this year’s freshwater deluge and those dolphin deaths - many of them covered in brown lesions caused by freshwater exposure. (Source: NOLA.com 08/18/19)