Effeds of Hurricane Katrina on the Fish Fauna of the Pascagoula River Drainage

large tropical storms can have dramatic effects on coastal, estuarine and terrestrial ecosystems. However, it is not as well understood how these types of disturbances might impact freshwater communities further inland. Storm surges can change critical water quality parameters for kilometers upstream, potentially causing subtle shifts in community structure or more drastic fish kills. Hurricane Katrina was one of the largest such storms to strike the coast of Mississippi and provides an opportunity to examine these effects in areas where we had pre-storm fish community data. In the weeks following the storm, fish kills were reported from some of the lower portions of the drainage. As part of a separate ongoing research project, monthly electrofishing surveys were conducted in 2004 and 2005 at ten sites throughout the Pascagoula River drainage. Survey effort was evenly divided among bank, sandbar and open channel habitats at each site from June through November. Sites ranged from 90 to 250 river km from the mouth of the Pascagoula River, creating a gradient of storm impact with which to judge storm effects on big river fish fauna . In addition, we compare preand post-storm communiti~s along Black Creek, a medium-sized tributary, as well as in a group of small, headwater tributaries.