Author: Anna Marlis Burgard / Source: Atlas Obscura
The estuary, marshes, and swamps of Alabama’s Mobile-Tensaw Delta are full of wonders, including hundreds of bird, reptile, fish, and mammal species. Its natural beauty is a reliable source of pleasure and plenty for its residents and visitors.
But on a few sultry mornings each summer, during a full moon, locals spring from their beds in response to news of a wondrous natural phenomenon occurring on a spot along a 15-mile stretch of coast. Catfish, shrimp, and flounder rise from Mobile Bay’s floor and swarm at the water’s edge, eels shimmy onto the sand, and crabs flee the water, scaling barnacled docks and tree trunks. This exodus of sea life provides residents with as much seafood as they can gig, net, or scoop. Inspired by the celebratory atmosphere it brings in its wake, they call it a jubilee.Alabama authors including Winston Groom (Forrest Gump) and Daniel Wallace (Big Fish) create characters and scenes that leave readers wondering where truth alchemizes into fantasy. Listening to recollections of jubilees feels like sitting at an uncle’s feet, listening to a story being spun as lightning bugs spark the night. Locals including Jimbo Meador, a delta guide who’s benefited from jubilees for almost 80 years (knowing about one before him is considered bragging rights) recently lured me in with tales that seemed apocryphal. Skiffs full of flounder? Shrimp scooped out of the water by the bushel basket?
“It’s like people who say they saw Bigfoot,” says bayfront resident Watt Key, author of Alabama Moon, “you don’t talk about jubilees that much to outsiders—they don’t believe you.”
I first heard about jubilees in 2014 when I stopped in Point Clear, on the eastern coast of Mobile Bay, while researching a book on recipes and tales from the Southern coasts. Back then, Texas Sea Grant marine biologist Tony Reisinger, whose mother hailed from Mobile, explained the science of jubilees to me.
“Estuaries have a dense saltwater wedge that slips like a long tongue reaching from the ocean’s side underneath fresher, less dense bay water,” he said. “Sometimes that dense, deeper water, which is oxygen deprived from decaying organic matter, is pushed onto the shallow eastern shelf of the bay by tide-driven water. That can force bottom-dwelling marine life to seek refuge along the eastern shallows—they scramble for air at the surface and as close to land as possible, causing a jubilee.”
But jubilees can’t be predicted, Reisinger added. The weather, tide, and moon cycle can all be right, but no jubilee appears. Folks in Point Clear chuckle about film crews from Time Magazine, CNN, National Geographic, and other outlets coming to town over the years, trying but failing to document it.
Jubilees may seem seasoned by legend, but they’re as real as the bay water they’re borne from, occurring multiple times every summer between June and mid September. Residents say they feel them coming, like northerners can tell when snow will fall. They tailgate after midnight at the dock when signs suggest one might manifest. Jubilees are part of Point Clear’s DNA.
The accounts I heard went something like this: You look for the signs and symptoms. Jubilees roll in after a full-moon midnight on hot summer evenings following a day with light showers. When both an easterly wind and rising tide push at the shore (but no boat or ship wakes disturb the water), bottom dwellers rise up in the small hours and head to the beach, gasping for air. The procession begins with eels slithering onto, then burrowing down into, the sand, writhing like a giant Medusa head. Hogchokers float to the surface, and catfish gather at the bay’s edge. Next, groups of fish poke above the surface to gulp air. Crabs claw their way up pylons, and shrimp crowd the brackish water in a tangle of antennae and legs, followed by flounder and stingrays, all slowed by a lack of oxygen. Soon birds start squawking and feasting on the buffet. Next comes the bell ringing along bayfront lawns to alert…
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