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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
Note that any opinions expressed in legacy Jackson Free Press stories do not reflect a position of the Mississippi Free Press or necessarily of its staff and board members.

Mississippi Department of Marine Resource officials discovered a high number of dead oysters in sample from Pass Christian Harbor yesterday. File Photo

When Mississippi Department of Marine Resources officials dredged a sample of oysters from the Pass Christian Harbor yesterday, approximately 80 to 90 percent of those oysters were dead, The Sun Herald reported yesterday.

DMR Shellfish Bureau Director Scott Gordon told the Sun Herald that he did not have enough evidence to attribute the high number of dead oysters to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Gordon also pointed out that the sample was small compared to the thousands of oyster reefs in Mississippi waters.

DMR, Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Aug. 25 that oysters from Mississippi waters are safe for human consumption.

Mississippi native Donna Ladd and partner Todd Stauffer founded the Jackson Free Press in 2002 in the capital city. The heavily awarded local newspaper did many investigations heralded across the state and nation and served as a paper of record due to its diversity, inclusion, in-depth reporting and deep connection to readers and dedication to narrative change in and about Mississippi. In 2022, the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press, founded by Ladd and JFP Associate Publisher Kimberly Griffin in 2020, purchased the journalism assets and archives of the Jackson Free Press. A Google grant through AAN Publishers enabled Newspack's integration of the JFP archives into the Mississippi Free Press website to become part of a more searchable archive of recent Mississippi history and essential journalism.