Habitat Destruction in the Chandeleur Island Hurricane Georges severely damaged the Chandeleur Islands. The eye of the storm passed 5 miles east of the islands, which are the first line of storm defense for southeastern Louisiana, especially New Orleans, and southern Mississippi. The islands are economically important for recreational and commercial fishing and shellfish such as shrimp. The Chandeleur Islands are a major habitat for birds. Initial aerial photography made by the USGS National Wetlands Research Center (NWRC) in Lafayette, LA, reveals that the burial of seagrass beds is comparable to that suffered during Hurricane Camille in 1969, when 27 percent of the seagrass beds was lost. How successful these seagrass beds are at recovering depends on the frequency and strength of future hurricanes. Because of sea-level rise and lack of sediment to replenish the islands after storms, the NWRC predicts this chain of islands could disappear in 200 years. Of concern to USGS biologists are the 20,000 redhead ducks that winter at the Chandeleurs each year. The Chandeleurs are one of four major wintering grounds for redheads, which feed on the rhizomes of shoalgrass, much of which was buried by sand during Georges. Shoalgrass, however, is just one of five species of seagrasses that grow out into the Chandeleur Sound and form the basis of an elaborate food web that supports a highly productive ecosystem including: many species of marine snails and bivalves that feed on the leaves themselves as well as the epiphytes that grow on the leaves; numerous crustaceans (shrimp, crabs, amphipods); many finfish (speckled trout, redfish, menhaden); sea turtles; and marine mammals. Birds dependent on this ecosystem include wintering redhead ducks; reddish egrets, great blue herons, great egrets; white pelicans and brown pelicans; gulls, terns, black skimmers, piping plovers and other shorebirds and seabirds; and some birds of prey like the peregrine falcon. Another biological concern is whether the Chandeleurs will continue to be the site of 8,000 nests of the endangered brown pelican, as it was documented to be in 1998. Additionally, the world's largest known concentration of Sandwich terns nest regularly on the Chandeleur Island chain. Their numbers range from 50,000 to 100,000 birds. USGS biologists estimate that the Chandeleur tern population is 55 to 91 percent of the total U.S. breeding population and is 34 to 61 percent of the world's population. Effects on their nesting will be determined in the year following Georges. USGS biologists also received reports from fishing outfitters in the area of high mortality of marsh birds, probably clapper rails, in some of the island ponds.