FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Midday Mobile - Live from Dauphin Island for the ADSFR Sean talks with Chris Blankenship, Dr. Sean Powers, and Rodeo President Matt Glass - July 19 2024
There will be no personal nor direct attacks on anyone and I would ask that you please try to keep down the loud cheering and the clapping. There will be no booing and no unruly behavior. With that, this is painful and it will be for a long time. After all, these are a couple of high-stepping turkeys and you know what to say about a high stepper. No step too high for a high stepper. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. Well, Sean's a tough guy. I mean, I think everybody knows that. You know, Sean, he took some licks, he hangs in there. Yeah, what's wrong with the bill we got? I mean, the bill we got drank pretty good, don't it? Did you hear what I said? So this is a bade council. I had no doubt about them. That doesn't suck. If you don't like it, you're bad. Last question. Were you high on drugs? Last question, kiss my ****. Oh yeah, here we go. FM Talk 1065 at midday mobile live from the 91st Alabama deep sea fishing rodeo and yeah, a little wet start to the rodeo. It's not the first time this has happened. You know, a little rain on the rodeo. Still people coming in as I was heading my way over here to the mobile command unit. So you'll see our van, which has got the studio inside part here at the rodeo side out. They were dragging the fish in through the main gate. So many fish already going in and getting weighed this morning. So they'll be lost to see if you come down on this Friday and then of course through the weekend Saturday and Sunday we'll talk more with folks from the Alabama deep sea fishing rodeo coming up later on in the hour. So if you got any questions, I'll have like officials in here. So you can always text those questions into 343 0106 3430 106. Also before we get into our first discussion, first guest, I just that news story at the top of the hour there, you know, the national news. This is why just for a second, this is why and not people at work will laugh along with me. This is why I wait and I wait and I wait until Microsoft forces you to do some kind of update. You know, they got to do an update. I'm like, oh, remind me later, push it off, push it off. And then you hear the story. So the people didn't update. Thing didn't work. And we had like a global, you know, a global tech down down cycle here. They said it was not a security incident or a cyber attack. No, it was the fact that people were updating their windows. So there you go. They'll teach it, teach it to keep pushing that update off. Do you all do that? Let me know on the text line. He says, hey, update now. And you're like, hey, remind me later, remind me later, remind me later. All right, let's do this. As we get started here, I know this man will be down here later today and we'll be able to see him in person. But right now, check it in through some kind of technology. Maybe he didn't do the update for Microsoft. It is the commissioner, Commissioner of Alabama's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. My buddy, Chris Blankenship. Good to have you on. Amen. Thanks for having me. I sure wish I was down there sitting next to you, not calling you from Montgomery with my view of the Capitol. I'd much rather be looking out over Alo Bay and watching the fish come in down there. But I'll get to that later today and over the weekend. Hey, what is that like? I mean, we always talk about how what a great thing it is for us to have you in that position. Now, you're, I mean, you're working for the entire state, all 67 counties, but you're a homeboy. And, you know, sometimes we get, I think, who we are down here, maybe is lost, if you're north of Montgomery, you know, people. Oh, yeah, there's those, those people down there, those two counties by the beach, like your job to try to, I don't know, make us relevant to the rest of the state. Yeah, it's, I mean, the mobile and ball in counties pretty much make themselves relevant, since that's where over 20 something percent of the revenue for the state of Alabama comes from those couple of counties. And especially this time of year, when everybody's down there at the beach and fishing and enjoying their sales on the coast. And I have, I am the only cabinet member really from South Montgomery, me and Ken Boswell, who's from the Enterprise area. So I feel like I'm carrying all of South Alabama on my shoulders while I'm up here, trying to do, trying to do good things, not only for the whole state, but like you say, just keep the issues that are important to coastal Alabama in the forefront and put my two cents worth in where I can to help. And now I got, I really enjoy what I get to do, but it sure will be nice to get back down there this afternoon to Dolphin Island and enjoy some time watching people at the largest fishing event in the world on Dolphin Island. Yeah, that's another thing I thought about is you talk to people up there, they're like, oh yeah, we know tournaments, we got big bass tournaments and stuff and you go, okay, that's good. We have this tournament right here, the rodeo, like you said, the planet's largest multi-day saltwater fishing tournament. I mean, this is it, not just in Alabama, in the world. That's right. That's right. Now, tell them any chance I get. I'm always intrigued every time at the rodeo to see what comes in. You know, we have great in-shore fishing. We have great offshore fishing in Alabama. And then people just enjoy it so much. And one good thing about out there in that deep water, you never know what you're going to catch. So the unusual fish that come in and the large specimens that come in during the rodeo are just fascinating. And I just love spending time down there. Well, yeah, we'll be welcoming you in this afternoon down here. Let's talk about this, you know, talk about the water and the fishing and something that you and I, obviously, and so many of us care so much about. You've been on with me before talking about water quality projects, right? And I'm a hawk on this thing. And I know you are too, that, you know, the thing that makes it all go round here, even the rest of the state in the river systems, but, you know, water quality makes it go round. And what y'all are doing through DCNR to help utilities do a better job, right, for water quality, or not just in utilities and other places. I mean, tell me the kind of money, because last time you were on, you rolled out some numbers here that really surprised me. How much money that y'all have funded for these projects? Yeah. And the last time we talked to about 160, 165 million, and we've had some increases since then, some budget increases on some of these projects and new projects that are coming online. So we're pushing up around $200 million in water quality projects in mobile and balling counties from either the Deepwater Horizon funding sources or from the Go Mesa, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act funding that comes through the Department of Conservation and working with our partner entities there in mobile and balling counties, whether it's the cities or mobile or balling county. You know, there's a lot of work going on to try and improve water quality, and particularly to limit the sanitary sewer overflows or any of those things that degrade the water quality in Mobile Bay. And I'm excited to see that work. And I can talk about that, but you know, ADIM's doing a lot of work as well with some ARPA funds and other things that, you know, about maybe like a billion dollars that they're managing, not just in mobile and balling counties, but throughout the whole state. And so it's, collectively, there's a lot of work going on, and I'm excited to see it taking place. Yeah, and it's one thing that we talked about last time. There's, you know, this is just the way the world works. There's going to be a lot of TV cameras and people taking pictures when y'all do other cool things, whether it be boat launches or seagrass restoration or like the big project going on here with expansion and the dolphin island Parkway or the callsway coming down here. These things are really, they're exciting and they make good, they make good photos, right? They make good video. But this part of it, I think, is undergirds everything, the water quality, we're going to do all these other things, but we have to protect the water. So that system here, you're talking about that, almost $200 million that has been given, how does it work? Do individual, I mean, how do the utilities come to the state and get the funding for the price, how does that like, give me like the walk through how that works? Sure. There's different funding sources. So there's five different funding sources altogether for from the deep water horizon and then the Gulf makes you any security act. So some of those are done, you know, where those entities will, when we open up a project suggestion portal and they will submit projects that they would like, that they need done in their communities and it's not just water quality. The last time we did it, we did make that an emphasis, but you know, it can be water quality projects. It can be land acquisition, suggestions, you know, boating access. It's just a whole gamut of things, but we look at these water quality projects and try and see where we can can help these communities. You know, for instance, Fairhope and they have a lot of pumping stations, you know, a lot of growth in Fairhope. A lot of the pumping stations didn't have, don't have generators. So when they have these huge thunderstorms like we get in Alabama like, you know, five times a week, but they'll, you know, they have some power outages or different things and without an additional power source at those pumping stations, that's where some of those sanitary sewer overflows are happening. So one of the projects is to provide those, you know, generators at all of these pumping stations in Fairhope to keep that moving in the pipeline like it's supposed to to the treatment facility. You know, that's going to, with Fairhope, it feels like that's going to be a really huge deal and help limit those overflows that they have. You know, Dauphin Island, for instance, as you're right there at the radio site, you can pretty much see the sewer plant on Dauphin Island when you first come on. One of the projects that just recently was approved to be able to put out for bid here very soon is to build a brand new tertiary treatment facility on Dauphin Island. So I have a brand new sewer plant on Dauphin Island under construction very shortly. Is it going to go in the same place or is it going to be in the same same place on that same footprint there on that property? We just, that's going to be a brand new sewer plant for Dauphin Island with the most update technologies to keep, you know, make sure that the water that's treated there on Dauphin Island and as it continues to grow has the capacity. Just this week when I was in New Orleans at the Federal Restore Council meeting, the other Federal Restore Council members voted with me to approve a project to move forward in Norton Creek, a sewer rehabilitation project along Norton Creek and Sierra Land where they've had some sewer overflows and so that's about a seven and a half million dollar project there in Sierra Land that's out for public comment now. And so we've been a myriad of septic to sewer projects that we're trying to get some of the communities and little line areas, especially in the Fau River area in Biola battery, South Mobile County off of septic onto sanitary sewer to improve water quality. You know, I don't know if you noticed coming down to Dauphin Island over the last month or two north, just north of Alabama port, you've seen that utility work going on on the west side of highway 193 as you've come down through there. That is a Gomesa funded project to expand the sewer system to take the RV park down there and all those houses along the bay to get them onto sanitary sewer off of septic tanks. So, you know, there's a, it is a broad amount of work that's going on and I think it's going to make a big difference in our water quality. Yeah, you know, the septic thing too is one of these though, you know, individual houses, leak and septic don't have a press release like a utility does, right, to show this comment, but the testing will show that it does come out and get into our waterways. How does that septic to sewer project work? Is it one on one from a homeowner to the project or do they have to be go-through an entity? Like, how do you address that? Sure. Yeah, it's different in different places, but like the the biobatry utilities, for instance, we've got some septic, we're running new septic sewer lines. Our biobatry is over there and then, you know, they will work individually with the residents to get them on that sewer same thing. And with South Mobile County, or I guess the Mobile County Water and Sewer Authority, we'll work in those areas to get those homeowners on to the septic system. And it's most of these projects, I don't say most of them, a lot of them are just now coming out of the engineering and design and ready to start construction. So that's what happened in Norton Creek. We had the Sarahland had to do the engineering and design. That was approved by the Federal Restore Council. And so what's out now is to move to construction, $7 million in construction. We have several of those type projects that are doing the engineering and design work now. And so in 2024 and 2025, those will be moving to construction. And nobody really sees what's happening when it's in engineering and design, because that's the engineers and the designers working, you know, in the permitting part with the Corps of Engineers and the Historical Commission and others. But when you actually start digging up the ground and doing that work, you know, then you can really see what's going on, just like what was happening along 193. That project's been in the works for a couple of years, finally got to construction. And I think we'll see a lot more that over the next two years. That's why I like talking to you about this. I mean, there's all kind of other stuff. You don't want to talk about fish and, you know, all these different restorations. But this one is, you're right, in the design phase, nobody knows about it. And even when you're doing the work for some of these things, it's not like there's a big ribbon cutting, right? It doesn't have the but I think it's so critically important that people know that this is going on and we're trying to do better here for water quality. I do. And I'll take some of the blame for that. You know, we're so busy trying to do good work and trying to work with our partners to do good work that maybe we don't do as good a job, publicizing it, you know, like when we have the announcement that these these projects are being funded, you know, have been approved. Well, some of those may have been two years ago when that announcement came out, but during the engineering and design and in the construction, it may be two or three years after that announcement that the project is actually completed. Well, if you're building a building or you're, you know, doing a road or certain things, you know, we have a lot of ribbon cuttings or do different things with that. But when you put a sewer, when you make your improvements to a sewer line, maybe we don't do as good a job of publicizing that and doing ribbon cuttings. And that's one thing that we've talked about internally is how can we better inform the public of this good work that's happening, whether that's in Sarahland or Chickasaw or Bialabatry or Dauphinile, you know, those are the moat in malls. They did a period in place concrete on the sewer lines along Perch Creek that that mall hit that project completed. You know, we probably need to do a better job of letting the public know that this was done because they're not inexpensive projects. I mean, they're big. Yeah, they're significant projects, but they affect everybody's life for water quality. And I think people should get excited. I don't know how to do it, Commissioner, like, do you do a, you know, here's the thing or say here before we saw the project, here are our issues, our point source, you know, of the overflows, isn't that now we finished this project. And look, we now have made a difference for Exenborough gallons or water quality, you know, some kind of before and after comparison. And that's an interesting way to look at it, you know, like, as, you know, the Department of Conservation, we're both people just think about us with hunting and fishing. That's what we do. Yeah, primarily in our state parks and our forever while program, those sort of things. But with managing all of the Deepwater Horizon projects, you know, ADIM is the general agency that handles utilities, whether it's water or, you know, clean water or the sewer, sewer work. And so that's, you know, we're kind of supplementing the other work that they're doing with some of these Deepwater Horizon funds. And, and they're doing, they're doing good things too. I mean, they're trying to get some of the ARPA dollars on the ground from one end of the state to the other. I mean, I talked with ADIM director Lance Lefloor on a pretty constant basis. We're working with them in several of our state parks to do work. And, you know, they, they, they've got a lot of stuff that's coming out now as well moving into construction. So not only is it helping the stuff in mobile and balling counties through the Deepwater Horizon stuff, but what ADIM's doing upstate, you know, all that stuff flows down. That's right. Be rivers down into mobile bay. So any improvements that they make upstate, it benefits us on the, on the coast as well. Well, I appreciate the work that's being done. And I appreciate you communicating with us like you talked about and, you know, letting us know what's happening out there with these projects. And hopefully come back soon to update us on this. And, and then I'll probably see you down here at the rodeo. Yep. Seeing a little while I'm ready, ready to get down there. Maybe I wet a line this weekend too while I'm down there. All right. Let's just mow them, Phil. I think you should. I think you should. It is Commissioner of Alabama's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Chris Blankenship. Thanks for your time. And we'll be right back. More of Midday Mobile live from the rodeo next. You're listening to Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. Call Sean now at 3 4 3 0 1 0 6. All right. So welcome back. It is Midday Mobile live from the 91st Alabama deep sea fishing rodeo and speaking of which we'll have President Matt Glass on with us. Also, the, the big judge here for the fish, Dr. Sean Powers will join us later on the show, plus Duff and Alan Mayor Jeff Collier joins us and Erica Thomas in the show. I think my buddy Ben Raines is going to slide by as well. He's been out fishing. We'll get his fish count. And this segment of the show brought you by 1-800-GOD-JUNK. Another guy, imagine Trey, if he's, you know, well, the brain is abated. I bet you Trey's out there. Trey, I don't want to give away everything, but I think he's probably trying to catch a blackfish. Trey, homeboy's been doing this for 16 plus years, getting rid of junk in Mobile and Baldwin counties, right? The name 1-800-GOD-JUNK. A lot of people say, well, I know what they do, but some of the things they do, I didn't know and I'd known Trey for a long time. The big stuff they get out, like they go get boxes out of houses and furniture and all that. But with routine, they're going to a house and doing things outside a house. Above ground pools, somebody bought a house and want to give it a bet. Big swing sets, storage buildings, those kind of big projects, they can handle those as well. So from boxes inside the guest room or the attic to removing, you know, a bunch of backyard infrastructure, they can handle it all. Easy to make an appointment and they do make real appointments. You can check them out online to make the appointment at 1-800-GOD-JUNK.com or pick up the phone and call them. The name is the number 1-800-GOD-JUNK. Give them a call, get that scheduled and Trey, I hope you catch, well, I hope you catch like fish, but not one bigger than I'm going to catch tomorrow. All right. To the text line at 3430106, let's see. Oh, dirt digger, we're on the same page. Dirt digger says, I've not updated my phone in three years and my wife does every time it tells her to and her phone doesn't work with a crap. There's some updates you got to do and then we're going back. If you didn't hear it, it'll come up here in a second on the National News. I'm sure this crowd strike, this outage that happened. Let's see, here's from CNBC, how a software update from cyber firm CrowdStrike calls one of the world's biggest IT blackouts. Now, you know, whoever it is, I mean, we'll deal with Microsoft stuff at work. I understand why they have to do updates. I do that, but I wait to the last minute. It makes me, because like everything's going fine. I'm truly sounding like a 52 year old man here. And then I update and then nothing works, right? I'll be right back. Boar of midday mobile live in the rodeo next. This is mid-day mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. Welcome back FM Talk 10065 and midday mobile live. Yeah, some of the text lines said why Sean sounded different. I think it's called Vereen because I'm live from the 91st Alabama deep-sea fishing rodeo. So these microphones are a little different than the microphones in the studio, but they work out anyway. All right, let's check in with my buddy, David McCraery at LCM motor cars. Hey, your car's got a free wash down today. Yeah, they needed it. I got a concrete company next door to me and Davidson Vol is concrete dust over here. And he will not come back and get it. No, wait a second. So yeah, you know, I mean, having, you know, the great selection vehicles you have at LCM out in the open air next to a concrete place, man, I didn't build a wall. I thought David would nicer and come over here and get a concrete dust, but he he won't even wave every when he passes by our procedures last. You know, you've got it's been the last couple weeks. I know you're always getting new inventory, but man, we've talking you're down in Florida, buying all that. You've had truckloads, new vehicles rolling in, you know, it seems like every three or four days. We have and we've got two more that are on the way. Actually, we had two vehicles, we got left down in Florida, figured it out yesterday. But so we've got, we've got doing inventory coming in. We're busy when we got customers, we got two customers here now fixing deliver one. So it should be a really good weekend for us. Nobody invited us to go fishing. So I guess we're going to work. Okay, well, yeah, I'm working down here too. If you want to have somebody who's pulling the boat back from the rodeo and says, man, I could do better. What do you have in trucks? We got a great selection trucks. I probably got 20 trucks on the ground, three quarter ton diesels. I got a Ford and a GMC Sierra with cat gas burners, half ton. I don't have any one tons right now. Well, I do have a one ton. Actually, they need to hear this. I've got a 2,000 one ton forward with a 7.3 diesel. And the guys that know what the 7.3 diesel is, that's the motor they say is indestructible. They say that's a million mile motor. And it belonged to my next door neighbor. He owned a lawn care business. And he's retired and moved out of town and left that thing what to sell. And it's a really nice truck. All right. Well, y'all go check it out, tell them how to find that truck and all the other vehicles at LCM. We're highway 90 and plantation in Theodore's one mile south of I-10 exit 15A. And give us a call at 251-3750068. And just go to the website LCM motor cars dot com. Good stuff, David. We'll talk soon. Enjoy your weekend, buddy. We'll do that is David McCreary LCM motor cars. Check it in. And we're checking in line from the Alabama deep sea fishing rodeo. And in the mobile command unit, I've got the I don't know if this is allowed. You know how they the president and vice president can't travel together. They have to be separate here. I don't know if it's over the bylaws for the J.C.s, but the president of the 91st Alabama deep sea fishing rodeo, Matt Glass, and the grand emperor of all fish judging Dr. Sean Powers in at one time. Gentlemen, let's be safe. Okay. Absolutely. Hey, I don't know what the rule is. The soul what is the soul survivor, whatever who's left on site there at the fish way. And it is it's always exciting to come down here and see the growth down here. And I remember coming in which yesterday, and I had seen the pictures you all put up with the dock, the new dock and all that stuff. But I hadn't seen it in person until yesterday. Are y'all ready to expedite some fish weigh in? That's the goal. Yeah. So we of course added that Doc seven extend the boardwalk to allow for the scientists to have more room to work on. We made doc one and two kind of one big platform to go to hopefully have some bigger boats built or just back in multiple big boats. But you still have that weight where you can have smaller boats, you know, anchor off side of it there as well. So we can definitely take in about two extra boats and then we even have some poles down here south end to put the sea lab boat or tow boat or whoever like that. So they're not trying to take up space so that we can keep those fish rolling through. Well, the other thing too is the vision for the spectator is just so much better now. It's always been good at the rodeo. But if you people that just want to go see what's going on, they can now see so much better. Absolutely. We opened it up like you said, more to the south where the live weighing tank is and towards that dock one and two with more barricades open for the spectator viewing area. Yeah. And so and what they're talking about the live tank too, that if y'all have not seen this before, of course, there's always the fish on ice. It's so cool. But speckle trout, you know, in that what all goes in live tanks. So this year for first time we have actually live flounder. So we have a triple threat going on live flounder, speckle trout and redfish. So I'm pretty excited to have all three of those in there. We've actually already had a new for fact live flounder come in. That was pretty cool. Yeah. So we've already had, you know, 30 fish live entry, which is good because considering the weather this morning slowed things down. The cool thing about that is those data keep on giving. So we will tag those fish when that before they go into the tank. They look fine. We will release those tags and some of those tags will stay in those fish three, four years. So it's not just the data we collect here at the rodeo today, but those fish will continue to give us information about their movement when they're caught or when they're caught. Or we also do have acoustic tracking. Okay. So they so some of these y'all can a small amount this year, but most of it's the traditional tag. So yes, when they're caught, although we get information about how many fish that are never caught to. We can clean some information in there. So that's been a great thing about the rodeo is is them helping facilitate this tag program. Okay. So what do I do? Because I know I'm gonna catch a bunch of those tag fish. Right. So when I when I catch one, what do I do when I catch a tag fish? So just listen to the instructions and listen, read the instructions on the tag. It gives you a website. You just go to the website, put it in whatever you would normally do with that fish. Do do with that fish, you know, release it. If you were going to release it, keep it. Excuse me, keep it. And then, you know, just report it to us. Because that I mean, that way you can say, okay, you know, a benchmark with that fish weight all the, you know, on this weekend in July, then you can look at it and say, that's how you figure out what growth, you know, growth speed and all that. Absolutely. And figure out what the fishing mortality is, what natural mortality is. It's a it's a just a great addition to the science. And again, something unique, scientists don't get to work this closely with groups like the mobile JCS and have all these anglers participating in helping us out. You know, Alabama really has a conscientious conservative conservation driven fishing community. And it's wonderful to see. And it's not the case in every state. That's one thing we've talked about before that, you know, I live here, it's like having the world's largest multi-day saltwater fishing tournament in my backyard. You just grow up like, well, it's a rodeo or, yeah, they work, you know, the state works with the scientists, works with the, I guess you get, you know, you get tunnel vision. That's how, but you're, you point it out, John, that it doesn't work that way everywhere. It's not a normal thing. And Mac can speak to it. But the JCS have been, I mean, I know they they support numerous charities and everything. But, but fortunately, you know, they've really committed to the University of South Alabama, both having us at this venue and taking care of the scientists, making sure we have everything we need. And then they've donated. Absolutely. They do that donation and marks to check in every March. Yeah, for a good while, that's goes back to years and years. I don't even know what that's up to now. But the relationship there is just so symbiotic. I mean, they help us tell us, you know, what fish should go after, you know, like we're doing, I reached out to Sean early when I was elected president. I was like, Hey, what do you think about doing this live Wayne category? Then Dr. Marcus, you know, mentioned me about doing the catch release Jack Kavow. And so, you know, he presented his ideas and stuff. It seemed like some anglers were kind of excited about that as well. So having that close relationship between the JCS and South is great with scientists. So I do know how much money you've given me. You've given the school half a million dollars in the last 20 years. It is amazing. And that, and that, so you're getting one payment today, tomorrow, Sunday of science and that data. And then at the same time, you get the money to continue the research. Well, it's actually to train the next generation of fishery scientists because we use all the money with agreement with the JCS. We use it all for graduate students or undergraduates. The faculty don't use it. We don't use it for our research. The university doesn't use it for anything. Egg money goes directly to the students. And again, shows you that conservation focus is that the JCS want to help train the next generation of scientists. Because they're young guys and we're old. Well, they are the next year. Well, the junior team of commerce. And that's why we have the Roy Martin, you know, that we can be forward. That's our future anglers. So we want to teach the kids young, see the small in their face. And of course, all those tickets go to our, let's talk about this. Let's get talked about enough. So Roy Martin, Young English tournament benefits. What do you all do with that money? So we take that money and we take kids shopping for Christmas tours and what their person for like their aunts, uncles, caretakers, brothers, you know, sisters, all about what Matt saying. So it's not, you know, there's so many programs like around Christmas, which are good where you, you buy toys or give money to make sure kids get toys. But this thing y'all do, these kids get to go buy Christmas for their family. And it is generally sharing. It's awesome. And I think that we've talked about it several times, but sometimes people go, yeah, Roy Martin's fun, the kid's fishing, but the beneficiary of that too, or other kids, you get the pride of being able to give that gift at Christmas. And then note that a lot of people are aware of, with their Roy Martin ticket, they can go to the Alabama Aquarium and gain entry for free with that Roy Martin ticket. So they definitely make sure they always hang on to that ticket and go see the old estuarium, the Alabama Aquarium, you know, down here on the island. No, it's a, it's a beautiful facility. Let's talk about as we, as Ken and Sean went off this morning, how you looking for how many people in the rodeo this year do you have ticket counts? So they're doing ticket runs today. Well, last time I looked at the numbers, we're around 3,400 registered, but we don't know off ticket sales yet. They're actually doing all the ticket pickups right now as we speak. Yeah, and I, you know, I can promote this now because the cannon's gone off. I'm fishing one of the things I'm fishing in speckle trout jackpot, because not because I think I'm going to beat Bobby Everschado or anything, but because there's just like the full rodeo has this drawing, the trout jackpot has a drawing for a boat. Correct. It's the 17 foot reaper boat that fossil Marines have given us to give away. So, I'm taking 17 pictures of it too so far. So yeah, let's go look. And it's got a nice Yamaha tail on the back of it deck it decked it out with a, you know, matting inside. And I, that's a sweet boat. Yeah, it is sweet boat. I've taken, yeah, sharing pictures of my friends, like, look what I'm going to win. Well, if you want to let me know how fast goes. Fuzzles 50s. It's got a 70 horsepower tiller. It got it's got to get up in bogey. Also walking through the air condition portion of the Alabama deep sea fishing rodeo. See so many sponsors that are here every year, but I see new people in there as well. Yes, we actually added a whole extra light to the sponsor to this year. So we've got, we have sponsors actually from like Wisconsin, all over the states this year. So it's a huge horseshoe this year. So definitely come to see out. There's a lot of vendors in there. It's nice. And I see I walked through a little bit earlier and I was a little wet and I was like, man, a little chilly actually. But definitely come check it out selling t-shirts, of course. That's what I'm going to say. So let me ask you this to set up. I can go online by those t-shirts, right Matt? No, can I go to a store in town and buy their shirts? Nope. One spot, one spot on the radio site. I come down here, come see us. Yeah, that has been, you know, that's, and numbers still pretty good on. I mean, there was pretty good lines last night during large contest. There was there sort of actually run out of certain sizes. So I'd suggest getting down here soon to the lighter because if you wait till Saturday, late Saturday or Sunday, there's a good chance it's going to be sold out. So y'all get down here and get the shirt. It's really cool looking and make sure you get your shirt for this year because there's, and it's cool to watch people walking around with like a 80th or, you know, a 78th, you know, the different rodeo shirts. They're buying this year's but they're showing off their, their past ones. What's always fun with that is the present that year gets to help design work with an artist. So that was a long time. Somebody asked me about an answer to the other day on there, but let you answer it because it's your shirt went like the names of the boats. Who is that? So that's my daughter's Georgia and my son is Micah. And then my wife and I, we actually met at the rodeo site seven years ago when I was over t-shirts and then we got married on Doc 4. And so that's why there's Doc 4 on there as well. So there's a story, when y'all see the shirt, there's a story behind each other. There's a whole story, you know, caught my first elephant tuna on a research trip with Dr. Sean back in October. They took me on. So I suppose the tuna on there doing live way and flounder. That's why the live way. That's why the flounders on there, the lorigs on there from a mom and dad with my dad's birthday on there from when he passed away seven years ago. So it's the whole, to me, the shirt means a lot. That's, you know, people need to stop and look. Yeah. So the shirts each, there's a story behind the shirt. And then of course, the way says has Dr. Bob ship. Yeah. So in memory of Dr. Ship. Speaking of thinking about Dr. Ship and Dr. Powers and I talked last, you know, earlier the week about the most unusual fish category. I don't know if you heard, I had Commissioner Blankenship on with me at the beginning of the show. And we're talking about some water quality things and projects being done. But he said, I'm, he's getting down here this afternoon. He's still in Montgomery. So I'm going to die. I want to see the most unusual catch. I said, well, you know, then I said to him the other day, I said, well, Dr. Powers tells me it's the one when you bring a fish in and the scientists have to go get their books. You're probably, that's usually, that means there's a winner. That's a good time. That's a good time. When y'all go, I don't know, let me get a book. Yep. Yep. And we're definitely without Dr. Bob around to help us. We, you know, we'll probably have to bring that book out a couple more times. But you know, that is really cool. And like I said, mostly it's the deep water drops that get you an unusual although, you know, some people might be fishing on the reefs and get some cool damselfish, parrotfish. Who knows? I mean, that's the whole, that's the whole beauty of that category. And Matt's done wonderful things to help let us honor Dr. Shipp with the most unusual category. So that's been, that's been very special for a lot of us. So with him saying that what we're doing actually is I have a plaque being made in our Dr. Shipp and we kind of picked some of his more favorite, most usual fish and whoever went first place because that Dr. Bob's ship plaque. Very cool. Very cool. So y'all keep, yeah, what did you say before when people will catch a fish and go, I don't know what it is and they'll release it because they don't know what it is that sometimes you get that story like, Oh yeah, I caught this thing. And so this and that they might have had the winning fish. Yeah. And we tell them if that was really that you should have brought it in. Yeah. So so I encourage them all to bring it in. Obviously you have to check to make sure there's not it's not a regulated species. But most people know what those are. Right. And that's a point because people say, well, there's not like they'll check, I use, you know, fish app and, you know, different things. If you check it there, and it doesn't show up in the regulated federal and and state things, then it's a it's on regulations absolutely allowed. Okay. So there. So y'all do it this way. Just by take all the possibilities and if it's none of those fish, like in your apps that are regulated, then it's fine to retain that fish. Absolutely. Absolutely. I tell you what, we'll go to the news, come right back, we're continuing our conversation with Elle Presidente and Elle the rodeo presidente and the fish presidente. I can't believe they let them both in the FM talk, 106 five mobile command unit at the same time, but they did backlash on powers and we'll be right back. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM talk one oh six five. All right, welcome back. We are live at the 91st Alabama deep sea fishing rodeo right here in downtown dolphin island and good to have president Matt glass and dr Sean powers in people you will see throughout today tomorrow and sunday at the rodeo. Yeah, the schedule here, if you don't know to be on realize y'all are doing this for free. Y'all are volunteering your time. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a it's fun. It's a brotherhood for us. You know, I mean, when it takes a full year, we put off or we have radio then come August, you like the new president, you build just like get the board going. We start going to work basically for a full year and it's the same full-time job. It really is, but it's a great just a bond and then what you put in is what you get out as what we've always said. That's always a great bunch of guys to see here and I mean, you've got to not only after Sean powers, you see their t-shirts, you've got a a full division of your your students here. Oh, yeah, we'll expose probably a hundred students to fishery science and and it's important that those young students we spoke about this last time I was on the show understand that fisheries is inherently different than other fields of science. You have to learn how to engage and explain things to the fishermen, not only essentially their license revenue, their sales tax or what's supporting us is one level, but no fisheries regulation ever makes any difference unless you get the buy-in. So these students, it's just as important that they learn the biology, but learn how to deal with the fishermen. Last week, they had to explain what they were doing to six-year-olds. This week, they'll have to explain they're doing to a whole bit of people with every possible background and that is something we can offer at South Alabama because of the partnership with the rodeo that no other university can and that's why we think we produce the best marine scientists. Right, because you'll learn in an ivory tower. You're on the dock. Correct. Correct. Correct. You're right the way it says you're getting nasty and dirty right there. Absolutely. And they love talking about it. Once you get that student over the initial kind of hesitancy, then you got to say, "Okay, I kind of heard enough. I need to go get my t-shirt now." So it's a wonderful experience and just sharing how rich of a resource we have here in Alabama. Not only people was from the rodeo anglers and the JCs, but just it really is an incredible resource that we have out here. And I love it that it gets highlighted during the deep-sea fishing rodeo. Yeah, it does indeed, but it's 365 around here. Before we wrap up, too, there's this other thing y'all do. And I joked at one point. It's like, "Well, it's the world's, it's the county's biggest music festival along with the fishing tournament." Y'all have that entertainment. It started last night after large contest the whole way through. Yeah, that's correct. So last night, we had Johnny Hayes from seven, 30, 10, 30. Tonight we have Bruce Smelly from seven to 10. And then we've got, ooh, I should be better prepared on that on my band. That's not you. We got the band all day Saturday. Yeah, delegate that. We got bands all day Saturday and on Sunday as well. I think Melman's on Sunday and then Big Reveal and a couple others on Saturday as well. And the thing, it was in the spots I've done for y'all. And people say, "Really?" And I said, "Really? Can people bring their own coolers?" Yes. So it's BRB this year, it's back, you know? Yeah. Just no glass balls, please. No glass, from Mac glass being present. Yeah, yeah. Sons up all over the side. I just took pressure. People can bring their own coolers with their beverages. Yeah, bring their own coolers. And the great thing about this weather is it's overcast. It is pleasant out there. This is, I don't even have the big air condition on here in the mobile command unit. Is that comfortable? I wouldn't be afraid of a shower. I will trade it for this temperature any day. Absolutely. All right. We're going to see y'all out there at the dog and around the rodeo side. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on. Always pleasure. Thank you. All right. Coming back, more of our coverage from Dauphin Island, the mayor, Jeff Collier joins us next.