Writing a Research Paper

[Tro-Trout]

Thanks for all the feed back guys. This is just a beginner level research paper our teacher is just introducing the idea of how to write research paper to my class. I will talk to her and see about narrowing my topic down to possible How the dredging has affected the sea grass in West Galveston Bay. Or maybe how pollution in the water can be linked to fish kills. The semester's just starting so i'm really just brain storming right now.I really appreciate all the input. Once I make a final decision ill let you guys know and if anyone wants to read it your more then welcome to when its all finished.

[Swells]

Very simple. You can snoop around on the internet or even call your regional office about this.

Red Tide - kills a lot of fish sometimes. More common on the lower coast. See TPWD "harmful algae." The TWD also does fish kills from freezing conditions (1983 and 1989 were bad)

Dolphin strandings - about a dozen or more dolphins dies each year on the upper coast for unknown reasons related to a pneumonia like illness. See the Texas marine mammal rescue folks.

Low oxygen - called "hypoxia," associated with summer fish kills when the temperature goes up and water soluble oxygen goes down, usually killing mullet, shad, and do forth.

Fish closures and advisories - Texas department of health, I think human services commission now or something, maintains a list of open and closed fisheries because of pollution such as PCBs, dioxin, and so forth. Many in the Houston area. They also monitor the oyster industry and when they can and cannot harvest.

Impaired water bodies - the TCEQ has a list of water bodies that are in poor condition and need to be remediated - we have one down south called the Arroyo Colorado (poor biological oxygen demand, mainly agricultural run-off)

Spills - the General Land Office maintains a list oil and petroleum spills, which sometimes are common in the Houston Ship Channel

That's just a start. You can write about all these kinds of things and get the facts ... the fish are pretty resilient but major incidents have happened. A paragraph on each, intro and conclusion, and you're done!

[Oleander Kayaker]

Don't let JYC's excellent (emboldened) research topic slip by....

I have a couple of ideas for research projects:

-Effect of dredge spoils on native sea grass beds (Coe's from above)
-Effect of 2011/2012 drought on crab population - 2012 was a terrible crabbing year
-Potential effects of revising the flounder limit, adding a maximum length, etc. (Lori's idea)
-Daily movement study of the AquaPimp including GPS maps

Good luck. Happy to help you out if I can.