Accident on the Intracoastal: A Louisiana sheriff says a cast member of the reality TV show Swamp People has died. Assumption Parish Sheriff Mike Waguespack says Mitchell Guist was pronounced dead at a hospital today. He had fallen while aboard his boat on the Intracoastal Waterway, near Pierre Part. Waguespack says initial reports from deputies in neighboring St. Martin Parish are that Guist was traveling on Belle River around 9 a.m. when he fell. The boat returned to a nearby landing in St. Martin, and Guist was taken to a hospital. The cause of his fall is unclear, and there is no word yet on the official cause of death. Swamp People, which airs on the History cable television channel, features residents of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya swamp country during alligator hunting season.
Successful succession: Ochsner Health System says its president and chief operating officer, Warner Thomas, will succeed Dr. Patrick Quinlan on Sept. 1 as the system’s chief executive officer. Quinlan has led Ochsner Health System since 2001. He will head the new Ochsner Center for Community Wellness and Health Policy, and will continue to be on the Ochsner Health System Board of Directors. The system’s board chair, Jimmy Maurin, says the board worked with both men to develop the succession plan. Quinlan says the new center will educate people and decision makers so that diseases can be tackled at their roots instead of treating symptoms. Quinlan came to Ochsner in 1999. His work included the 2001 unification of the Ochsner Clinic and Ochsner Foundation Hospital.
A source for preservation: Civil engineering professor Ehab Meselhe has joined the Water Institute of the Gulf as director of natural systems modeling and monitoring. In addition to overseeing the Water Institute’s modeling and field observation capabilities, Meselhe will develop partnerships with universities, government agencies and the private sector in building and implementing the modeling and monitoring programs. With nearly 20 years’ experience in studying coastal and wetland systems, Meselhe has been involved in large-scale coastal restoration projects in south Louisiana and Florida’s Everglades. Since 1997 he’s been a distinguished professor for the University of Louisiana-Lafayette’s civil engineering department and director of its Institute of Coastal Ecology and Engineering. The Water Institute of the Gulf was formed in 2011 as a not-for-profit, independent research institute dedicated to advancing the understanding of coastal and deltaic systems. For more information visit the institute’s website here.
