Mobile Bay

Oyster restoration in Coastal Alabama is continuing with funding through the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resources Damage Assessment Program. $7 million to aid the efforts has been approved by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Thousands of American lotuses carpet the water's surface, faces turned toward the morning sun. Bright yellow warblers flit among cypress trees along a creek bank. A paddlefish jumps as a motorboat rounds a bend. The Mobile-Tensaw Delta — a lush, vibrant and surprisingly intact over 400-square-mile expanse of cypress swamps, oxbow lakes, marshland, hardwood stands and rivers — is teeming with more aquatic species than almost anywhere in North America.

The document in which Abraham Lincoln blockaded southern ports, including Mobile, is now part of the late President’s library and museum. The order set in motion the Union's military response to the launch of the U.S. Civil War. The document is now among Illinois' prized papers of the 16th president, thanks to a donation by the state's governor and first lady. APR covered the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Mobile Bay, which occurred after the signing.

The application deadline is approaching for interested Alabama 6th and 7th grade students to apply to the Estuary Corps Middle School Program. Middle school students are invited to engage in activities that explore and improve the Mobile Bay Estuarine system during the three-day program.

When a deadly explosion destroyed BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 134 million gallons of crude erupted into the sea over the next three months — and tens of thousands of ordinary people were hired to help clean up environmental devastation from the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The aftermath of exposure of chemicals called oil dispersants was at the heart of Alabama Public Radio’s national award-winning documentary “Oil and Water: 10 Years Later.”

Earth Day is celebrated during the month of April, but there are also several other free events happening throughout coastal Alabama this month to help people learn about and appreciate the local environment.

Oyster habitats are rapidly disappearing around the world. That doesn’t just mean losing a delicacy. Oysters also play a major role in coastal environments. A team of scientists on Mobile Bay is working to turn that loss around. That effort may have national impact.

A museum that tells the history of the Clotilda — the last ship known to transport Africans to the American South for enslavement — opened Saturday, exactly 163 years after the vessel arrived in Alabama's Mobile Bay.

A major oil refinery in Mobile is being sold for $75 million. Shell Oil Company announced it is selling the complex located at the northern end of Mobile…

The ship channel at the northern end of Mobile Bay is under refurbishment in a $365 million project.The widening and deepening of the channel began Friday…