The River Delta in Lower Alabama

The River Delta in Alabama is super interesting and we learned all about it when we enjoyed a pontoon boat ride on the Mobile Tensaw River! So of course I had to share some of this information with you all. Unfortunately when we were there it was very flooded so we couldn’t see the banks of the river thus no 

alligators and the fishing wasn’t good. But it was still amazing to see the Ghost Fleet site and the gorgeous wetland area!

The Mobile-Tensaw River Delta is the largest river delta and wetland in Alabama. It encompasses about 260,000 acres and is the second largest delta in the contiguous United States. "It is arguably the biologically richest place," scientist E.O. Wilson said, describing the importance of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta on a global scale. "The delta floodplain forest and swamp, and the area immediately around it, including the Red Hills to the north, has more species of plants and animals than any comparable area anywhere in North America ... it is a place yet completely unexplored, sort of like the upper Amazon."

In Baldwin and Mobile counties there are 13 acquisitions totaling over 48,000 acres. These tracts consist of bottomland hardwoods, cypress/tupelo swamps, bogs, marshes and a variety of other wetland habitat types interspersed amid abundant waterways of rivers, creeks, sloughs, ponds and lakes.
 
As one of the most biologically diverse regions in both Alabama and the United States, it is home to 126 species of fish, 46 mammals, 69 reptiles, 30 amphibians, and at least 300 species of bird, including more than 110 which nest in the region! Each spring, flooding turns dry land wet as hundreds of thousands of acres of bottomland forest in the Delta floodplain disappear under ten feet deep water for three months. ​​

​As we were boating up the river, we came across the Ghost Fleet site, also called the Tensaw Fleet, which is where Liberty Ships and other Navy crafts were parked on the Tensaw River after World War II. ​During its peak, there were 347 ships in port. There were plans to refurbish the vessels by President F. D. Roosevelt so the merchant marine fleet would be better equipped for merchant marine ​

​service, which during 1945-1973 was considered a viable military resource.

​Blog post written by Amy Karras
Unnamed Adventures