Environmental Atlas of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin

	Biological Resources: Habitat Inventory | Estuarine Living Marine Resources | Essential Fisheries Habitat | Submersed Aquatic Vegetation

Biological Resources - Essential Fisheries Habitat (EFH)

• Introduction
• Lake Pontchartrain, Brown and Pink Shrimp
• Lake Pontchartrain, White Shrimp and Gulf Stone Crab
• Lake Pontchartrain, Spanish Mackerel and Spiny Lobster
• Lake Pontchartrain, Gray Snapper and Red Drum
• Breton Sound, Brown and Pink Shrimp
• Breton Sound, White Shrimp and Gulf Stone Crab
• Breton Sound, Spanish Mackerel and Spiny Lobster
• Breton Sound, Gray Snapper and Red Drum
• Mississippi River, Brown and Pink Shrimp
• Mississippi River, White Shrimp and Gulf Stone Crab
• Mississippi River, Spanish Mackerel and Spiny Lobster
• Mississippi River, Gray Snapper and Red Drum

The goal of NMFS' Essential Fisheries Habitat (EFH) project is to identify habitats essential for maintaining fishery productivity. The project objective is to reduce activities that adversely impact the species and ensure conservation, enhancement, and restoration, thereby creating healthy habitats for fish and humans. Efforts of the EFH complement an associated legislative amendment to the laws protecting and conserving national wildlife and fisheries resources that are being depleted, altered and polluted (U.S. Department of Commerce NOAA). These maps and information are presented for use in identifying EFH in the Gulf of Mexico and LPB (U.S. Department of Commerce NOAA).

Maps linked here focus on Lake Pontchartrain, Breton/Chandeleur Sounds and Mississippi River habitat areas. Within each habitat area is the relative abundance of seven species (brown shrimp, pink shrimp, stone crab, spanish mackerel, spiny lobster, gray snapper, and red drum) in both adult and juvenile forms. These maps display the four salinity seasons in each of the estuaries. Relative abundance for a salinity season in an estuary was determined as the highest monthly relative abundance value in the ELMR database for that salinity season. Relative abundance values are general categories and the same colors have been used for all estuaries; however, the categories do not represent the same densities for different species. For a particular species, comparisons of relative abundance can only be made in a general way from one estuary to another. The most meaningful comparisons of relative abundance for a species can be made among areas of an estuary and among salinity seasons (U.S. Department of Commerce NOAA). For more information about the definitions of the terms used to describe relative abundance (not present, rare, common, abundant, highly abundant) see ELMR.