Post Construction Monitoring and Habitat Assessment of Gulf Sturgeon in Response to Ship Island Restoration Efforts by the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program | W81EWF 22 SOI 0008

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81EWF 22 SOI 0008

This funding opportunity, titled "Post Construction Monitoring and Habitat Assessment of Gulf Sturgeon in Response to Ship Island Restoration Efforts by the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program," is a discretionary cooperative agreement offered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers through the Department of Defense Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). The work is framed as applied science and monitoring tied directly to the Ship Island restoration effort, with a strong emphasis on producing a credible before-and-after comparison of Gulf Sturgeon use of the area and the condition of the benthic community that supports their foraging. The notice lists one expected award with an award ceiling of $173,000, under CFDA 12.630, and it was originally posted in February 2022 with an April 2022 closing date.

The core purpose is to evaluate how Gulf Sturgeon occupancy and feeding habitat around Ship Island change after restoration activities, and whether predator-prey relationships remain aligned. In practical terms, the project is meant to test whether Gulf Sturgeon continue to use the Ship Island area, especially Dog Keys Pass, as favorable foraging habitat once restoration has altered local conditions. To do that, the project combines two main monitoring tracks: (1) acoustic telemetry to document when and where tagged sturgeon occur around Ship Island, and (2) benthic sampling to measure habitat condition and macrofaunal composition (the bottom-dwelling invertebrate community that forms an important part of the food web). A key theme throughout the opportunity is replication of earlier, pre-restoration methods so the resulting analyses can support a robust pre- versus post-restoration comparison rather than a one-off snapshot.

The anticipated work is broken into a clear set of tasks. First, the recipient will capture, process, and apply acoustic telemetry tags to late-stage juvenile and adult Gulf Sturgeon from the Pearl River and/or Pascagoula River systems. This fieldwork is expected to occur during summer and fall seasons across 2022 through 2024, using netting methods appropriate for riverine habitats. Second, the recipient will construct, deploy, maintain, and ultimately retrieve an acoustic telemetry array positioned at Ship Island, with the array planned to operate over a longer monitoring window from 2022 through 2027. The deployment season is described as extending from September through June, implying that receivers would be in place for most of the year and then serviced or removed during the remaining period. Third, the recipient will download detection data from the array at regular intervals and provide summarized data products that ERDC can use for internal reporting and program oversight. Fourth, the recipient is expected to work jointly with ERDC on analyses that translate raw detections into occupancy trends and comparisons across both project phases (pre- and post-restoration) and different project zones around Ship Island.

The methods and applicant expectations signal that this is not an entry-level monitoring award. Successful applicants are expected to bring expert knowledge of Gulf Sturgeon life history, plus extensive, hands-on experience capturing and handling endangered fish safely and legally. The opportunity specifically points to following general netting and tagging guidelines recommended by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA, reflecting the protected status of Gulf Sturgeon and the need for careful animal welfare and compliance practices. The applicant must also demonstrate competence with telemetry-based research, including not just deploying arrays and tagging fish, but also managing, summarizing, and analyzing detection datasets in ways that support occupancy and habitat-use inference. Permitting is explicitly the applicant's responsibility, meaning the recipient must secure any required federal and/or state authorizations before conducting fieldwork.

On the management and reporting side, the cooperative agreement structure comes with several required written products and recurring communications. The selected organization must prepare a Statement of Work and a Work Plan that lay out how the research will be conducted, and must provide routine status reports aligned with invoicing (either monthly or quarterly, depending on the billing arrangement). In addition, the recipient must submit one annual report each year of the cooperative agreement, summarizing progress on data collection, preliminary analyses, and any emerging patterns relevant to restoration outcomes.

The deliverables are focused on actionable ecological questions tied to restoration performance. Written products must address the timing and duration of Gulf Sturgeon occurrences within the Ship Island project area, describing when sturgeon show up, how long they remain, and how that varies across seasons and years. They must also describe occupancy patterns in response to habitat changes at Ship Island, linking shifts in sturgeon distribution or presence to post-restoration environmental conditions. Another required deliverable is a comparison of timing and habitat use among sturgeon from different natal drainages, which implies that tagging and/or identification approaches should allow fish to be associated with their river of origin and then compared once they are detected around Ship Island. Finally, the project must evaluate correspondence between sturgeon habitat associations and macrofaunal composition, essentially connecting fish presence and site use with the benthic community to understand whether foraging habitat quality and prey availability remain consistent with sturgeon behavior after restoration.

Taken together, the opportunity is designed to produce a defensible, multi-year assessment of whether Ship Island restoration maintains or improves ecological function for Gulf Sturgeon, using consistent pre- and post-restoration telemetry and benthic monitoring methods, and delivering analyses that ERDC can use to interpret restoration outcomes in terms of endangered species habitat use and food-web conditions.

• The Department of Defense, Engineer Research and Development Center in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Post Construction Monitoring and Habitat Assessment of Gulf Sturgeon in Response to Ship Island Restoration Efforts by the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.630.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 10, 2022.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Apr 12, 2022. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $173,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for W81EWF 22 SOI 0008

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: