At 9 years old, Madison Yates spent the summer before the 2013-2014 school year exploring the barrier islands around the Mississippi Sound along the Gulf Coast and interacting with the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies’ residential dolphins and sea lions as part of the institute’s summer camp program.
“Summer camp was one of the best weeks of my life,” Yates, who grew up on the Gulf Coast and studied wildlife fisheries and aquaculture at Mississippi State University with an eye toward veterinary school, said. “It’s really where I think my love for ocean and marine biology in general kind of started.”
Now 23, Yates is back at IMMS as an intern in the stranding department, helping staff members rescue injured sea turtles and dolphins from the Sound and nurse them back to health. The internship is one of many education opportunities offered at IMMS, an environmental nonprofit in Gulfport, Mississippi, dedicated to studying and protecting marine life along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast.
By bringing people closer to the Sound and the species that call it home—whether through internships, school field trips or guided animal encounters at its adjoining marine park—IMMS aims to underscore the value of marine ecosystems and the importance of preserving them.
“The ocean is a vast environment that, depending on how it goes, can really affect us in the long-term,” Dr. Forrest Collins, IMMS’ marine ecologist and research supervisor, told the Mississippi Free Press in a July 27 interview. “A lot of people can look at the ocean and say, ‘Wow, it’s either blue or brown. What color is it today?’ But there’s a lot more that goes on with that.”
Hands-On Learning
IMMS’ efforts to educate new generations of marine scientists and conservationists date back to the nonprofit’s founding in the 1980s. Today, the organization offers 12-week internships in four separate departments: research, stranding, animal care and aquarist training. Each program is open to applicants with an array of backgrounds and experience levels.
“We want to see people that are coming in and saying, ‘I have an interest in this and want to get involved,’ but we also understand that some of these students that come in are going, ‘I want to do this as a job, but I don’t really have experience,’” Collins explained. “That’s the point of the internship: to give them that type of experience that they wouldn’t get just from walking through an aquarium for the day.”
As part of her internship in the stranding department, Yates has spent the summer caring for sea turtles and other marine life undergoing rehabilitation at IMMS. Animals housed at the nonprofit’s veterinary hospital receive personalized treatment plans, and interns get to be part of the initial screening process and put the plans into action.
Tasks range from prepping the sea turtles’ food and medications to cleaning their water tanks and monitoring any incisions from hook removals, Yates told the Mississippi Free Press.
“(Our) day-to-day is just keeping up with their treatment plan and making sure that they’re going in the right direction,” she said. “The best hope is eventually they get to be assessed for release.”
Working at the stranding department also means responding to calls about injured marine mammals or sea turtles, many of which are mistakenly hooked while swimming near beaches or fishing piers. IMMS is part of the federal government’s National Stranding Response Network, and the organization has a 24/7 hotline where the public can report stranded animal sightings.
Staff members and interns take turns monitoring the hotline and coordinating rescues along the coast—even when the animal in question is deceased, Yates said.
“There’s always someone ready to answer the phone at any time of day if someone finds a live or dead sea turtle or dolphin,” she explained. “We are trained on hotline procedures and what information to get from citizens so that we can relay it to our training coordinator.”
For Yates, a standout moment from the summer involved releasing a turtle that she helped rescue and rehabilitate. A fisherman had snared the turtle near Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and Yates fielded the hotline call and helped get the animal back to IMMS for same-day testing and treatment.
“Getting to actually see the full thing through from beginning to finish (was) definitely one of my favorite parts of the summer,” Yates said. “And then actually getting to be the one to release it back into the water—that’s what stranding is really all about.”
IMMS has turned its sea turtle releases into a celebratory occasion. When one or more turtles are deemed healthy enough to leave the facility’s hospital, the nonprofit invites the public to join its staff on the beach and watch the animals return to the water.
These events serve an important educational function, Collins explained, allowing people to observe the turtles in their natural habitat and ask questions about their behaviors. They also reinforce the value of conservation and good stewardship at a time when the Sound faces multiple threats.
“There’s so much that’s going on with the environment that people can’t see,” Collins said. “What we’re working to do is to show people what is actually going on in their neighborhood.”
Planning for Adversity
Collins believes IMMS’ work along the Gulf Coast has taken on greater urgency due to recent environmental disasters. Following the Bonnet Carré Spillway openings of 2019, which altered the Sound’s salinity levels and devastated local ecosystems and species, the nonprofit has been working to determine the exact level of salinity that would sustain the area’s dolphin population.
This could help inform decisions about future spillway openings as climate change increases flooding events along the Mississippi River, Collins told the Mississippi Free Press.
“Our mission in the research department is to answer some of these hard questions,” he said. “We need to open the Bonnet Carré so that other people don’t suffer from flooding, but we also need to make sure that it doesn’t open so much to where the ecosystem that’s in the Gulf just gets decimated.”
IMMS is also working to educate students outside the Gulf Coast, inviting them to experience the Sound and tour its animal care facilities and marine park. Through these opportunities, the nonprofit hopes to broaden their horizons and forge connections between the Gulf and inland communities, Collins said.
“There’s a large population that lives on the coast of Mississippi, but that’s just (part of) Mississippi,” he said. “There are probably still people within the Southeast that have never gone to the beach before.”
For Gulf Coast natives like Yates, the Sound will always be home. She plans to return to the coast after veterinary school to practice wildlife medicine, and she described joining the full-time staff at IMMS as something akin to fate.
“I definitely would not be surprised if it somehow happened,” she said, noting that the organization has played a formative role during multiple stages of her life. “I think that would be a dream.”
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and read past stories here.
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