Bringing Baffin Back (Part 2)

Bringing Baffin Back… from what?

In last month’s issue, Mr. Murray talked about how unique and special Baffin Bay is, being one of the most isolated estuaries on the Gulf coast and part of the world’s largest hypersaline lagoon. Its iconic and ancient reefs, built over thousands of years by tiny tube-dwelling serpulid worms, attract anglers from near and far. To many, it is the “jewel” of the Texas coast, with salty waters that support world-class spotted seatrout, abundant redfish, and an impressive black drum fishery. Consequently, it is a major contributor to the local economy around Kingsville and beyond. We’ve also heard from lots of long-time anglers about the great memories they’ve made in Baffin Bay with friends and family https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPP0V1EnyT4), which will also be the subject of a future podcast on The Gulf (https://www.harte.org/project/gulf-podcast).

However, over the last three to four decades there has been a significant decline in the water quality of this once pristine ecosystem, with symptoms including but not limited to persistent “brown tide” algal blooms that cause seagrass die-off and make fishing difficult, large kills of trophy-size fish, episodes of apparent starvation of black drum, and loss of critical bay habitat. Anglers, fishing guides, landowners and bay-dependent businesses have commented that these symptoms were historically unprecedented for Baffin Bay but have been increasing in frequency and intensity in recent years, hurting their ability to make a living.

These observations are consistent with what has long been known to scientists and resource managers about the impacts of water quality degradation - without good water quality, it becomes harder and harder for an ecosystem like Baffin Bay to support the things that we care about, such as a healthy fishery.

To get to the bottom of the water quality issues, the Baffin Bay Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Program was implemented in 2013 and found that Baffin Bay is being subjected to excessive nutrient (nitrogen, phosphorus) pollution coming from its watershed (basically all of the lands that eventually drain down to the bay. Much of the pollution comes from human sources: minimally treated wastewater, fertilizer runoff, even failing septic tanks. This nutrient pollution is a key promoter of the algal blooms and other symptoms of water quality degradation and must be addressed to restore Baffin Bay back to good health.

Baffin Bay needs to go on a nutrient “diet” and Bringing Baffin Back is the program that will do it. Introducing the Bringing Baffin Back initiative…

Early this year, we at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI) along with partners at the Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program (CBBEP) introduced the Bringing Baffin Back initiative. The overarching goals of Bringing Baffin Back are to: 1) implement solutions aimed at reducing nutrient inputs to, and improving water quality in Baffin Bay, 2) restore key bay habitat that has been lost because of the decline in water quality over the past three- to four-decades, 3) foster stewardship, especially among younger generations of residents, and 4) educate the public on the relationship between watershed and bay health. Bringing Baffin Back represents a sustained commitment to dramatically improving the health of Baffin Bay and the surrounding economy through partnerships between scientists, citizen groups, landowners, philanthropists, policy makers, local municipalities, state officials, NGOs, and private businesses.

What’s particularly exciting is we learned in April that Bringing Baffin Back was selected as one of four projects that will receive support from Texan by Nature’s Conservation Wrangler program.

Texan by Nature is a conservation non-profit that was founded by former First Lady Laura Bush in 2011. Its mission is to advance conservation by acting as a strategic partner for business and an accelerator for conservation organizations. Through their Conservation Wrangler program, Bringing Baffin Back will receive 18 months of tailored support on strategic planning, marketing, partnership development, and more. This is a huge deal that will bring positive attention to Baffin Bay and efforts to conserve this amazing resource.

What will Bringing Baffin Back look like and how will the community benefit?

Phase I Bringing Baffin Back consists of multiple, integrated phases. Phase I began in 2013 with research and monitoring to assess water quality and habitat condition and continues to this day, thanks to support from generous partners such as the Celanese Corporation and the Coastal Conservation Association. Over the next five years, we aim to establish real-time weather and water quality monitoring platforms in the bay. This will allow us to establish a baseline by which to evaluate the cumulative impacts of watershed and bay restoration activities that will happen in Phases II and III. The weather data will also be available to anglers free of charge.

Phase II has now begun and focuses on watershed management and restoration activities that will lead to reduce pollutant inputs to Baffin Bay. In 2018, the Baffin Bay Stakeholder Group formed as a way to get the community involved in restoring Baffin Bay. To date, the group has had success at securing funding for a Watershed Protection Plan https://twri.tamu.edu/baffinwpp that will bring services and funding to landowners who want to “do something” on their land that will improve conditions in nearby streams and eventually in the bay. The group also recently learned that the Natural Resources Damage Assessment program (developed from the Deepwater Horizon spill settlement) is proposing to devote $4.7 million to address agricultural pollution sources to Petronila Creek, which flows into Baffin Bay. Over the next decade the Baffin Bay Stakeholder Group will focus its efforts on securing additional funding, on the order of $200+ million, to address pollution sources, including failing municipal wastewater infrastructure, residential septic tanks, stormwater flows, and other agricultural sources.        

Phase III focuses on restoring habitat that has been lost in Baffin Bay itself. This represents the penultimate phase in Bringing Baffin Back. A team of restoration practitioners will utilize data provided by ongoing monitoring in the bay to focus its restoration targets and bring to bear the most appropriate restoration practices based on conditions in the bay. It is anticipated that this phase will commence in 2027 once watershed restoration and nutrient reduction efforts start to take effect and lead to improved water quality conditions.

While the goal of Bringing Baffin Back is to restore the health of the bay itself, the surrounding communities will see significant benefits as well. For example, many of the solutions to the problems in Baffin Bay require upgrading of water infrastructure, which is challenging to do without a catalyst such as Baffin Bay in relatively poor, rural communities such as those around the bay. In addition, many studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between home values and water quality. And it goes without saying that clean bay water is generally more attractive to recreational users than dirty water.

A vision for Baffin Bay from Scott Murray, long-time angler and conservationist

The success of Bringing Baffin Back depends on three vital components: continued funding, tireless leadership, and engagement of the next generation.

I hope to see the state and federal agencies become more engaged and bring additional funding and personnel resources to this issue now that our Watershed Protection Plan has been approved. Funding from the agencies, as well as private entities, and people like CCA Texas and other conservation organizations, is the fuel that keeps this going. Leadership from scientists at HRI and its partners, of which there are many and the list grows daily, has gotten us this far – we need it to continue!

These scientists need continued support to do their valuable work and to develop new partnerships to solve Baffin’s mysteries.

Finally, for Bringing Baffin Back to have lasting success, we need to continue to expand our reach to local and regional community members and stakeholders; to make them aware of the issues, and to make them a part of the process. Getting into our middle schools and high schools to influence the thinking of this next generation of stewards in terms of their own backyard here and how to preserve it should be a central focus. I’d like to see programs that educate younger folks on the issues, let them know about the history of the bay, what we hope to see in the future, and make them a part of the process by getting them out on the bay with field trips and volunteer restoration events. I would love to see that happen in the Kingsville schools, the Alice schools, the Flour Bluff schools, here in Corpus, across the whole eight county region of lands that drain into the bay. Young people need to be informed of how to best care for the treasure that’s in their own backyard. We need to make them a part of the process and we truly believe there are many young people who will pick up the mantle and carry this forward. And, then finally, what does success look like? I think that success is seeing an ecologically restored and productive Baffin Bay once again… what I experienced in my lifetime in the ‘60s, the ‘70s, and the ‘80s before the decline started.

Bring Baffin Back – how you can help

The rationale for Bringing Baffin Back is simple – the health of Baffin Bay is intricately tied to the health of surrounding lands.

To achieve successful outcomes that lead to improved health in Baffin Bay and the surrounding economy, the Bringing Baffin Back team is eager to strengthen partnerships with landowners and businesses to identify solutions and funding to implement those solutions across the watershed and bay. In short, Bringing Baffin Back represents the first whole ecosystem restoration project of a bay in Texas and will be a signature project for partners of the initiative.

Over the coming years there will be ample opportunities to participate in Bringing Baffin Back through volunteering, participation in stewardship, and public outreach events, taking advantage of services that will be offered to landowners, or by donating to support Bringing Baffin Back. By joining the Baffin Bay Stakeholder Group, you can stay updated on these and other exciting opportunities, and track the progress of Bringing Baffin Back. To learn more about Bringing Baffin Back and to join the Baffin Bay Stakeholder Group, please contact Michael Wetz of HRI at [email protected] or 361-825-2132.