Home › Water › Bays & Sounds
Mobile Bay
Alabama's gateway to the Gulf of Mexico
Mobile Bay is a shallow, funnel-shaped estuary on the Gulf coast of Alabama, fed by the Mobile and Tensaw rivers draining a vast basin that reaches up into Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. About 30 miles long, it is the state's outlet to the sea and the site of the Port of Mobile, one of the busiest ports in the country, as well as the 1864 Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay.
Its warm, brackish, and very shallow waters - mostly only about 10 feet deep - feed rich oyster reefs, shrimp, and crabs, and the surrounding Mobile-Tensaw Delta is one of the most biodiverse river deltas in North America. The bay is known for a strange local phenomenon called a "jubilee," when low oxygen drives fish and crabs toward the shallows in such numbers that residents can scoop them up by hand.