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				“Marine Meadows” The delicate seagrass beds along the Texas coast nurture juvenile finfish, crabs and shrimp, as well as turtles and waterfowl. But how well are we nurturing them? Texas Parks & Wildlife By Phil H. Shook The lean figure on the poling platform freezes like a bird dog on point. Speaking in hushed tones to his companion on the bow, he points out a redfish moving into view on a shallow Aransas Bay grass flat. When the fish puts its head down to root for crabs and shrimp, the caster flicks a gold spoon a few feet away. The redfish sees the flashing lure and wallops it in a boiling strike. When the fight is over, the fish is revived at boatside and released. The wide-shouldered red makes a gentle wake as it swims away, fading into the lush dark bottom of the grass flat. Back in the boat, there is a handshake and the pair take a moment to look over the tranquil flat. It's time to move and the 150 h.p. outboard drives the 21-foot skiff into a tight circle. Sand, grass and mud boil up behind the stern but the tunnel drive hull is soon on plane and running full bore in a foot of water. The two anglers are off to hunt on another flat. In the course of the day these anglers have bent over backwards to be good stewards of the coastal resource. They have practiced catch and release, given a wide berth to other anglers on the water and refrained from running shallow shorelines. Yet on several occasions, when moving off shallow grass flats, the prop on their flats boat has carved gashes in seagrass beds. Along 235,000 acres of seagrass beds that extend from Port O'Connor to South Padre Island, Texas anglers are able to fish clean, clear flats, where they can see bottom structure as well as the game fish they hunt. But prop scarring and other factors pose a threat to this unique style of recreational angling found on the flats of the middle and lower Texas coast. "Nobody likes to fish when the water is turbid or a bright brown in color," points out Larry McKinney senior director of acquatic resources for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. coast. Despite noticeable damage from prop scarring in some areas and more serious coastwide threats from declining water quality,dredging and channelization, seagrass meadows along the middle and lower coast have stubbornly held their own over the last two decades. Marine scientists and fisheries experts warn, however, that forces are present that could cause significant losses in in this critical marine resource. Besides filtering out sediment, seagrasses provide a natural hunting gound for game fish and the anglers who pursue them. They function as direct food sources for fish, waterfowl, and sea turtles, serve as nurseries and sanctuaries for juvenile finfish, crabs and shrimp and generally serve as biological indicators of water quality on Texas bays and estuaries. From Matagorda Bay south there is a transition that takes place with seagrasses taking over as the dominant structural vegetation. Almost 80 percent of the 235,000 acres of seagrasses are located in the Laguna Madre, an estuary which begins just south of Corpus Christi Bay and runs southward 140 miles to South Padre Island. Most of the remaining seagrasses, about 45,000 acres, are located in the heavily traveled San Antonio, Aransas and Corpus Christi Bay areas. Marine biologists have identified five species of seagrasses on the Texas coast: shoalgrass, turtle grass, manatee grass, star grass and widgeon grass. Seagrasses fill many roles and provide many benefits in the marine environment. "If the seagrasses are destroyed, a criticial element in the life cycle of juvenile finfish is removed from the marine environment," McKinney says. Ken Dunton, research scientist and seagrass specialist with the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aranas, points out that seagrasses also are important to water quality. "By their very nature, they provide structure on a bay bottom and by providing that structure, they slow and retard water movement. That results in the deposition and settling of particulate matter and that particulate matter is then deposited on the bottom." As a result the water around seagrass beds is always a lot clearer. "The water transparency is always higher and people like that because fish are mainly visual predators and part of the joy of fishing is being able to see what you are fishing for or watch a fish chase your lure, chase your bait." Seagrasses also trap and conserve nutrients that are essential to other marine organisms, Dunton says. "They serve to internalize nutrient cycling. Instead of being washed out of the system nutrients important to productivity systems are taken up by seagrasses in their roots and leaves so those nutrients don't leave the system very easily. So we have what we call a reservoir for nutrients that would otherwise be flushed right out of that system." Seagrasses also serve as a secondary sources for a variety of marine orgnisms. "Nature makes it, nature eats it, the saying goes," Dunton says. "What turns into dead, decaying matter is ultimately consumed in the food web and becomes a very important part of the marine system. What we call the scavenger-based food web is the basis of the shrimp industry." Another important role of submerged grasses is to provide habitat for gamefish, forage fish and crustaceans, Dunton says. "The habitat issue is important not only for adult organisms but particularly for the larval forms of fsih, shrmp and crabs. Seagrasses also provide a substrate for a lot of other organisms that are important as food sources to larval fish and crabs. Small algae or bacteria grow all over the surface of these blades and turn out to be very important food sources for these small developing organisms. Seagrasses suffer from a variety of man-made and natural abuses. While marine scientists say prop scarring is not the most serious coastwide threat to seagrasses, it has taken a toll on heavily traveled areas of the middle coast. Simply stated, propeller scarring of seagrass beds occurs when boats travel in water that is too shallow. The best way for boaters to avoid scarring seagrass beds is to know the water depth requirements of a boat's design. If seagrass is observed in the propwash, a boater obviously is running too shallow. McKinney says annual surveys of seagrass beds conducted with officials of at UTMSI indicate that 97 percent of the area in the Estes Flats area of Aransas Bay shows evidence of prop scarring. "When you fly a few hundred feet over the flat, you get a perspective that I don't think the boaters get," McKinney says. "Estes Flats) is crisscrossed (with prop scarring). McKinney says the fact that seagrass beds have actually showed some increases in Aransas and Redfish bays overall in recent years, that should not distract from the prop scarring issue. "People ask why we are concerned about a little loss of seagrass on Estes Flats when other areas are gaining. That is fine when you look at the whole landscape, but folks don't fish in those other areas." While prop scarring presents a serious problem for seagrasses in some areas of the coast, it may be the easiest one to address, McKinney says. He says up to 80 percent of the problem of prop scarring can be dealt with just by putting up signs and buoys to direct boat traffic around the most fragile seagrass beds. Efforts are being made by a number of groups including the Corpus Christi Bay National Estuary Program to but up signs at area boat launches. Despite the ravages of prop scarring, marine biologists and fisheries officials say there are worse thr! eats to this vital piece of the marine landscape. On a coastwide basis, water quality problems, dredging and channelization pose even bigger threats to seagrasses. Texas Parks and Wildlife reviews every permit for wastewater discharges that occur next to wetlands for their effecto on seagrasses. ?We try to make sure that the impact (of the discharges) is either eliminated or minimized,? says McKinney. ?Some of these smaller communities say you can?t cut off motorized boating because fishing is their most important activity, yet they want to turn around and discharge their wastewater right on top of seagrass beds that support that very econo! my.? Subsidence, which can be caused by a number of factors including natural processes such as compaction and faulting, withdrawal of shallow subsurface fluids and shallow sulfur and salt mining also takes a toll on seagrasses. Subsidence in Texas also is caused by human activities associated with water use and oil and gas extraction. Dredging causes problems because of the spoil that often is piled up on top of the submerged grasses. Spoil can become big piles of mud and when there wind action turbidity is increased, cutting out sunlight creating an adverse situation for seagrasses. On the lower Laguna Madre, the two issues that have had the most impact on seagrasses are brown tide algal blooms and dredging. Walter Kittelberger, chairman of the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation says the best way to understand the harmful effects of dredging on Laguna Madre seagrass beds is to visualize dropping a cup of dirt into an aquarium every day. "At first the effects might not be so noticeable as in the case of dredging. But after 50 years of doing it in a very harmful way, the cumulative effects are just now becoming obvious even to those hardened against environmental and conservation initiatives." There also are concerns that too many nets from shrimp boats scar the bottoms of bays, disturb sea grasses, stir up sediment, and generally disrupt the ability of bays and estuaries to function in their critical role as marine nurseries. In 1996, 1,871 bay shrmpboat license holders and 1,806 bait shrimp license holders dragged trawls through Texas bays and estuaries. Since then, working with the shrimping industry, TPWD--which has the authority under Texas law to set limits on when, where and how shrimpers can conduct thier business as well as how many can do it--put into place a limited ent! ry plan designed to address both the economic plight of the bay shrimper and the over-harvesting of the resource. Submerged seagrass habitats on the Texas coast are the focus of a number of special conservation and management programs. While there are differences in approaches, a committed group of marine scientists, state fisheries officials, coastal conservation groups, recreational anglers, and coastal communities are united in trying to find ways to protect this marine resource while still providing the broadest possible access to these waters. In 1996, a Symposium on Texas Seagrasses was held in Corpus Christi. Participants, which included TPWD, Texas Land Office office (TCLO), produced a coastwide Seagrass Conservation Plan for Texas (SCPT). The plan addresses the critical research and management needs and the types of programs that can be developed to solve the problems. The Corpus Christi Bay National Estuary Program's Coastal Bend Bays Plan (CBBP) also includes actions at the regional level that address seagrass habitat preservation and the impacts caused by recreational activities. Central to this effort is a comprehensive approach to maintain water quality. The Corpus Christi Bay National Estuary Program (CCBNEP) is a four-year, community based effort to identify the problems facing the bays and estuaries of the Coastal Bend, and to develop a Long-Range, Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan. The Program's fundamental purpose is to protect, restore, or enhance the quality of water, sediments, and living resources found within the 600-square mile estuarine portion of the study area. It includes three major estuaries--Aransas, Corpus Christi and the Upper Laguna Madre. Texas Parks and Wildlife, in its role as overseer of state role is involved in a number of initiatives to protect and enhance seagrass beds on the Texas coast. For the first time ever, McKkinney says there is the possibility for setting state water quality standards that take into account the protection of seagrasses. For the first time ever, McKinney says , there is an opportunity to set state water quality standards that take into account the protection of seagrasses. Every three years TNRCC reviews water quality standards, the standards against which they judge their permitting allowances. McKinney says TPWD has proposed water quality standards be set to protect seagrasses and that has never happened before. "Seagrass has not been recognized as an aquatic use before and so we are trying to put into those water quality standards a standard that says we should set water quality such that it allows for the their propagation." Texas Parks and Wildlife also spearheads the Seagrass Task Force.Created last June and made up of 20 representatives with a broad mix of coastal interests, the volunteers will help reach a consensus and draft proposals for protecting and enhancing seagrass beds that will later be presented to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission. Other plans related to the seagrass issue include proposals to create aquatic reserves or no-motor zones on selected estuaries. Will Meyers, an Austin architect, seeks support for a plan called the Aransas Aquatic preserve that would close a large portion of Redfish Bay to all inboard and outboard motor use except in designated boat traffic areas. Outside the traffic zones, anglers would be restricted to wading, drift-fishing, poling or the use of an electric trolling motor. Redfish Bay contains some of the most bountiful estaurine nursery grounds on the Texas coast and also includes some of the most attractive and popular fishing grounds. Critics of the plan include business owners in communities on the middle coast who have questioned the wisdom of a plan that could cut off access to thousands of anglers. The Corpus Christi Chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA-Texas) also is proposing a similar no-motor zone on the north side of the Nine Mile Hole, a more remote estuary on the upper Laguna Madre. Duke Bonilla, president of the Corpus Christi CCA chapter and a member of the Seagrass Task Force, says it would include a boat traffic lane that would be wide enough to drift through and fish as well as provide a point where boaters would be required to shut down their motors. From that point boaters would be allowed to pole or use an electric trolling motor to move over the flat or they could anchor, get out and wade the area.! "We think the Nine Mile Hole area is a terrific starting place for a demonstration project because there is not as much traffic and usage as in other parts of the (bay systems)," Bonilla says. McKinney says the current discussion of seagrass issues is a healthy and positive sign for the resource especially since it is taking place when there is no state of emergency. ?There is a wide range of opinion, both for and against, the various ideas that have been proposed. Regardless of their opinion, they all agree that seagrass conservation is important, and that bodes well for the future,? he concluded.. Texas' Five Species Of Seagrass Shoalgrass, Halodule wrightii, is an opportunistic, fast-growing species capable of invading bare areas and recovering relatively fast. It is the most abundant subtropical species coastwide, with the most extensive beds in Upper Laguna Madre. Turtle Grass, Thalassia testudinum, occurs in deeper water. It is a slow growth species that can take eight to ten years to grow back if it is disturbed. "The turtle grass seems like it is getting hit hard in some areas like Redfish Bay and it takes a long time to reestablish whereas with other types like shoalgrass, the recovery is two to three years," McKinney says. Manatee grass, Syringodium filiforme, for practical purposed occurs (along with turtlegrass) only as far north as Aransas Bay, and is abundant in the Lower Laguna Madre and Corpus Christi Bay areas. Wigeon grass, Ruppia maritima, although technically not a seagreass is placed in the same category because it is important in the marine environment as a food for waterfowl. Star grass, Halophila engelmanni, is another invasive plant that occurs in higher salinity waters. It is often found interspersed in shoalgrass and manatee grass beds. Phil Shook is co-author of fly fishing the Texas Coast: Backcountry flats to Bluewater January 2000