I toured southern Mississippi a bit this week. Drove down around Biloxi and looked at the storm damage and what not. I guess, PCB spoiled me, but why is the water brown there? Someone told me once you get past about Mobile it's always like that.

Another thing that shocked me was they ran colverts from the street drains right out into the surf. Ick

The sand is brown also from there over into Louisiana. We stayed at Gulfport, MS one time and the beach was nasty, water was not clean to go out in even then, was brown then, this was when my son was 2 or 3 years old, he is 25 now. I am spoiled to the white sand and the emerald green waters also. I couldn't even begin to enjoy any other. I cannot believe they would do that. That is sickening.

I'm pretty sure that the Mississippi River Delta as well as the drainage from Mobile Bay has a lot to do with the water being brown over that way. If you look at that area on Google Earth you can see how large the delta system is, hence an awful lot of silt being flushed out into the Gulf and brown, yucko looking water. As for most of the areas from around Pensacola to Mexico Beach, there's really no silt to speak of draining into the Gulf by comparison.

Want to know why the Emerald Coast's sand is so white? Check this out:

History of Our Sand

The unique sand of the beaches in the Destin area is among the whitest and most homogenous of the world.

Consisting of small quartz particles, this sand came from a process involving the Appalachian Mountains and the Apalachicola River 20,000 years ago. At the end of the last Ice Age when the world temperatures began warming and the ice caps began melting, large volumes of water were carried by the rivers to the world’s oceans. The Apalachicola River, rising in the Appalachians, carried water to the Gulf of Mexico and continues today.

This water carried the quartz particles from the rock that forms the Appalachian Mountains and deposited them in the Gulf of Mexico, just 125 miles to the east of what is now Destin. As the sea level began to rise, these quartz sands eventually formed a new shoreline. The sands today continually replenish and reach as far west as the Pensacola Pass, their final destination.

Source: www.destinchamber.com

You can also find more info about our sand, our water and the eco-system of the Emerald Coast in this great article from GraytonBeach.com!

"The Gulf of Mexico along the beaches of Destin & SoWal is so clear because no large, sediment-heavy rivers directly influence the waters. The water coming out of the Apalachicola River, the primary source of our Gulf water, is filtered through the estuary of Apalachicola Bay. While passing through this bay and out past the barrier islands in that area, the Gulf water deposits most of the silt and other sediments, that for example, make the Atlantic less translucent. The Gulf water along the beaches of Destin & SoWal appears aqua green because of the purity and hence crystal clarity of the water. The shallowness of the Gulf and the high reflectivity of light off our sugar-white sands also help to create our beautiful translucent water."

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