Tough Stuff: Marine Researcher

According to this team of researches from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, we're wading through an excellent example of the conflict between man and marshland.

“It's a combination of a lot of houses a lot of runoff a lot of nutrients and there is an 18 hole golf course up stream,” says Senior Marine Scientist Just Cebrian.

We're in the Gongora Canal in Perdido Key, Florida. This is one of three areas Cebrian has been studying for the last eight years. He says they're trying to see how pollution affects these valuable marshes.

“We always need a little bit of marsh in between the houses and lagoons because those marshes will absorb so much of the pollution that goes from the houses into the lagoons.”

We took some water samples and tested oxygen levels. Next, we get icky with core samples. A drum is filled with mud from the bottom of the canal. Most of it is a black muck with a rotten egg stench from decaying marsh grass.

“The leaves only live for a year or two they'll naturally die, and then they'll break down and decompose,” says Graduate Student Kate Sheehan.

One of the easiest ways to check the water's health is with a big net. The more we catch by dragging it through the water, the better it is. We end up with a modest haul of tiny guppies. Cebrian says if this area was healthy we'd have more fish and different species. With the samples collected, the real work begins back in the lab.

“For hour or two you spend out here it's six hours working up samples, running analysis so this is the fun part here,” says Goff.

Watch the other stories in Chad's Tough Stuff series:

Tough Stuff: ZooKeeper

Tough Stuff: Tiny Diny

Tough Stuff: Auto Mechanic

Tough Stuff: Firefighter

Do you have a job that you think is Tough Stuff? Email us at mornings@wkrg.com. Chad may try his hand at your job in a future Tough Stuff series!