Oct 5, 2018 - Louisiana’s battered barrier islands have become a fishing paradise, says Chris Macaluso, blogging for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

And oil spill fines are helping restore beaches and marshes that serve as defense against storm surge and enhance coastal fisheries.

Almost $20 billion in oil-spill fines from BP alone over the next 15 years will be used to address damage to fish and wildlife habitat, he says.

This is good, educational stuff, and Chris even has video to help paint a picture of what’s going on around the shrinking Mississippi River delta.

An excerpt:

The islands are incredible places to fish and offer unique nesting and resting spots for hundreds of species of resident and migrating birds. From spring to fall, barrier island surf teems with speckled trout that have been drawn out of the interior wetlands to the Gulf to spawn or chase migrating shrimp and schools of menhaden and mullet…

The islands are incredible places to fish and offer unique nesting and resting spots for hundreds of species of resident and migrating birds. From spring to fall, barrier island surf teems with speckled trout that have been drawn out of the interior wetlands to the Gulf to spawn or chase migrating shrimp and schools of menhaden and mullet.

Late-summer and fall also bring huge schools of breeding-size 12- to 50-pound redfish into the passes and surf zones, where they spawn and fatten up on blue crabs that gather in large masses along barrier island beaches to lay eggs. When Gulf-side surf is roughened by summer’s southerly winds, the marshy backsides of the islands offer protection, and often better fishing, to anglers…

Read the full post here.