San Antonio Bay Partnership “Doing It Right” to Protect Our Coast

Saltwater fish face a variety of hazards along the Texas coast. Over the past decade, weather events such as the freeze of February 2021, red tides, trash accumulation, and derelict crab traps have all taken a toll. Yet, a small but mighty organization is making positive waves.

San Antonio Bay Partnership (SABP) has never shied from tackling threats to a healthy coast. SABP is a stakeholder-based non-profit that works in partnership with coastal communities, businesses, academia, and other NGOs to protect, restore and enhance the natural resources of the San Antonio Bay System for the benefit of the ecosystem and its human users.

True to their partnership name, they work with many agencies and organizations – San Antonio River Authority, Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Port O’Connor Chamber of Commerce, City of Seadrift, Texas General Land Office, Harte Research Institute, and others.

Texas bays and estuaries provide vital habitat for many commercially and recreationally important species, feeding and resting places for migrating birds, and contribute billions of dollars to the Texas economy. In fact, 90-95% of all commercially and recreationally important species are found in our estuaries at some stage of their life cycle. With major weather events like droughts and storms, estuaries are also becoming appreciated for their role as "storm buffers” protecting residential areas from hurricanes.

SABP focuses on the Texas Mid-Coast, at the terminus of the San Antonio River and the Guadalupe River watersheds and includes San Antonio Bay, along with neighboring Guadalupe Bay, Espiritu Santo Bay, Hynes Bay, Ayers Bay, Matagorda Bay and Aransas Bay.

For thirteen years, SABP has addressed a variety of concerns – abandoned crab traps, plastics and other debris, sea turtle rescue, ensuring sufficient fresh water inflows, and degraded oyster reefs.

All of these factors have cumulative and negative impacts on the economy, recreation and tourism. For example, marine species can be fatally caught or entangled in abandoned crab traps and fishing nets. In addition, plastics leach harmful chemicals into coastal waters that have been found in the fat deposits of marine species, including sport fish. These chemicals have potential to affect the reproduction, growth, and behavior of fish.

Unfortunately, the Texas coast is littered with more debris than any other coastal state and ten times more plastic debris than the eastern Gulf of Mexico. This is probably not news to fishermen and boaters that have seen or even run into floating or submerged debris, or to tourists and vacationers strolling our beaches.

The good news is that there are organizations like SABP that are doing something about it. SABP is largely a volunteer-run organization that has had an impact. SABP volunteers have removed 8 tons of trash, more than 6000 derelict crab traps, and rescued over 100 sea turtles.

According to Allan Beger, the Chair of SABP, “Our strength is involving our stakeholders: community members, schools, businesses, other NGOs and agencies to work together to make the Mid-Coast more resilient. Just last year we had 183 volunteers manning 33 boats to remove 355 bags of trash, 4 tons! This was the equivalent of 537 manhours, cleaning over 70 miles of shoreline, and removing consumer plastics by foot, kayak, and boat.”

In addition to removing various debris and plastics along the coast, SABP further protects marine life with their involvement in the Abandoned Crab Trap Program. Texas blue crab populations have declined significantly during recent years. In fact, last year's harvests were the lowest ever recorded – only 3.1 million pounds landed, 50% less than the historic average of 6.3 million pounds. Blue crabs normally generate $12 million annually for coastal economies, but when landings decline not only do the crabbers suffer, so do restaurants and local economies.

Derelict crab traps are known to be a significant source of mortality for many species, some of which are both recreationally and/or commercially important. Traps continue to indiscriminately trap and kill fish and other organisms – a process known as “ghost fishing.” By continuing to capture fish, crabs, and other species that could have contributed to harvests or ensure next year's populations, they are also having an impact on our coastal fisheries.

According to James Dodson, SABP co-founder and current project manager, “For the last three years SABP, with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and aided by harvest closures enacted by TPWD, has coordinated Abandoned Crab Trap Removal Program activities on the mid-coast to both remove derelict crab traps, and to collect data on the locations and contents of the traps to generate information on Best Management Practices to reduce the number of abandoned crab traps in the future.”

In order to gather detailed data about the types of species and numbers of marine life caught in these traps, SABP led the charge to organize community volunteers to systematically search the bay to remove traps and record trap location data, content, and ownership.

SABP discovered that there was a large number of ghost-trapped species. Twenty-eight percent of traps held blue crabs; fifteen percent held stone crabs; and eight percent held finfish. Several diamondback terrapins were also recorded. The total number dead or released alive for the preliminary NOAA pilot study: 526 blue crabs, 316 stone crabs, and 89 fish. One windblown trap, found on the shoreline, even contained a clapper rail, alive and happy to be finally freed.

SABP is also planning for the future by providing estuary education annually to thousands of public school children. They partner with the Texas Floating Classroom to get youth out on the water to learn firsthand that estuaries are one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in Texas and the world. In this way, the Texas coast and its estuaries serve as living laboratories of life, as well as provide opportunities for future generations to care about and learn about protecting them for our future.

While SABP has been conducting coastal clean-up and derelict crab trap recovery for years in response to long-existing problems, their organizational model is agile enough to respond to immediate needs. For example, the winter storm of 2021 left Texans shivering and sea turtles “cold-stunned” and helpless. A cold-stunned turtle is a turtle that is too cold to swim, and likely to perish from extreme temperature drops.

On Valentine's Day 2021, while green sea turtles were feeding on seagrasses in shallow Texas waters, there was a rapid and extreme temperature drop into the 20s, which persisted all week. This led to the largest number of cold-stunned sea turtles in the United States, with 12,155 cold-stunned sea turtles recorded. (Fish can and do get cold-stunned as well but are not likely to survive a rescue.)

This catastrophic event provided the impetus to start the Mid-Coast Sea Turtle Rescue program, now fully incorporated into SABP. Since its inception the program has responded to three cold-stunning events, mobilizing volunteer boats and crews to search the bays and ground teams to transport the turtles to rehab facilities. SABP also responds to other turtle strandings through the Turtle Stranding & Salvage Network for Matagorda and San Antonio Bay Systems and their gulf beaches. The last two years have seen a marked increase in strandings of loggerhead turtles – for reasons that are currently unknown. To date a total of 125 cold-stunned and stranded sea turtles have been rescued.

In the future, SABP is interested in addressing the problem of insufficient fresh water in-flows to keep our bays and estuaries healthy. Without sufficient fresh inflows, and the sediments and nutrients they deliver, Texas estuaries cannot function as nursery grounds and protective cover for the fish and shellfish we like to catch and eat.

SABP has already begun to look at ways to “bank” available stream flows during wet periods, to be used to augment in-stream flows to bays and estuaries during droughts. This way, they can provide delivery of water to the right place at the right time.

“Estuaries cannot function ecologically without an adequate supply, seasonal inflow, and quality of fresh water. The recent drought years have taken a toll on our region and this directly affects wildlife and associated recreational and commercial users,” says Berger.

For example, whooping cranes that over-winter at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, are not only one of the rarest species on the planet, they are also heavily dependent upon fresh water. During the last drought, lack of freshwater led to some cranes dying.

While the problems facing the Texas coast are significant, the effectiveness of SABP as a working model stands out. It also presents Texans and recreational fisherman an opportunity to get involved. From their annual coastal clean-up events to their kayaking excursions to view wildlife, SABP provides an open invitation for the public to join and make a difference.

Ultimately though, we can all make a difference through our own actions. Berger reminds us that much of the debris they pick up includes fishing lines and plastics “thrown or blown” overboard by boaters and fishermen. Yet, we can all “Do It Right” by taking care not to pollute our coast, bays, and estuaries. In this way, we are helping Texas and Texans now and into the future.

To learn more about San Antonio Bay Partnership, or better yet, to lend a hand in cleaning up the Texas coast, go to: www.SABayPartnership.org.