Bomb-sniffing dogs? Along the Mobile Bay, try a feces-sniffing dog named Professor X.

The Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) held a double-blind assessment of Professor X, a dog who has been trained to detect human sources of wastewater, as a demonstration of their Wastewater Detection Canine (WDC) program at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab's Shelby Auditorium on Feb. 17.

A press release on the program states, "dogs possess roughly 300 million olfactory receptors, compared to around 5 million in humans, making them uniquely suited for detecting otherwise nearly undetectable substances."

Because of this, the release reads, dogs have often been used in military operations to find improvised explosive devices (IEDs) A.K.A. bombs. MBNEP is using similar methods used for teaching bomb-tracking to train a team of dogs to address "environmental needs."

The release also states this program was conducted in partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Alabama Department of Public Health, Cities of Fairhope and Mobile, Mobile County and Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

Paul Orcutt, the dog trainer and handler for the WDC program, works with the veteran organization Xan O Consulting LLC in training the dogs.

According to Cody Aloi, project manager for the WDC program, Orcutt has "roughly 35 years of experience" in training military and defense dogs in finding IEDs. Aloi has a total of 16 years "between the military and Department of State contracts" including experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Paul and I met while in training to go to Iraq, and we have taken lessons learned from finding IEDs — bombs — with dogs to finding bacteria," Aloi said.

Aloi said Blair Morrison, the "science lead," was "instrumental in developing the program." Orcutt and Aloi handled the work with the dogs, and Morrison helped them "make it scientifically sound."

"Pathogens are a significant source of water impairment worldwide, and this program helps identify these human-source bacteria," Aloi said. "This program will be used as a screening tool to target efforts before costly laboratory testing needs to be conducted."

Aloi said the dog, X, scored an overall accuracy (UO) of 0.9944444444 with a positive detect accuracy (UO) of 1.

The press release on the WDC says one of the purposes of the program is to "reduce time and cost" that is associated with the typically used method, "Point and Non-Point Source Tracking." The use of canines will also allow for "quicker response and mitigation" compared to this traditional method.

The release also states "canine deployment" will be implemented in or around "three areas with priority-level pathogens" including West Fowl River, Fly Creek and Peterson Branch.

According to the MBNEP website, West Fowl River, located in the Escatawpa River Basin forming in southern Mobile County, has a management plan that focuses on "restoring and conserving the watershed" along with improving the quality of the areas water and habitat where "resources could have been damaged" by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

The website's page on the Eastern Shore Watershed reads how Fly Creek was listed on the State of Alabama's 303(d) "list of impaired waters for pathogens" in 2018 for traces of E. coli "due to pasture grazing" near some of the local streams. It also states that "many of the tributaries" have been impacted by increased sediment "within the urbanized portions."

Peterson Branch, located off Perdido Bay in Baldwin County, did not have a page on the MBNEP website, but it was listed as a site for a future living shoreline project in the spot where the branch reaches the bay and in the surrounding area.

The release states the program's future implementations "depend on the pilot project's success."

"Still, immediate next steps would include utilizing this program in other watersheds within the MBNEP service area," the release reads. "Beyond this, applying this methodology in the environmental realm is virtually limitless."