By Allison Marlow It might as well be the year 1519, the same year that Spanish conquistador Alonzo Alverez de Pineda first sailed into the bay he named Espiritu Santo, the Holy Spirit. The explorer was the first to map the curves and dips of Mobile Bay and much of the Gulf Coast. He was the first outsider to meet the thousands of animal and plant species that called the area home. Now, 500 years later, award winning environmental journalist Ben Raines skates in his boat across the top of those same waters of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, pushing the craft’s nose gently into the same hidden crevices that Pineda took care in measuring and charting.