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GALVESTON - Bruce Bodson looked disapprovingly at a wide, rutted trail carved through the marsh at the edge of one of the most pristine bays on the upper Texas Gulf Coast.
Four-wheeled ATVs ferrying 110-pound bags of oysters had crushed the glasswort and cordgrass into the mud along a long arc around the lip of Drum Bay, which forms the western end of Christmas Bay. The damage left a scar that could take years to heal and cause the shoreline to erode, said Bodson, executive director of Galveston Bay Keepers, as he took in the scene last Thursday.
Oyster boats churned through the shallow waters of Brazoria County's unspoiled Christmas Bay this season for the first time in at least 16 years, leading to accusations of environmental damage and calls for closing it and neighboring Drum Bay. The drive to find oysters in this designated natural preserve is a result of high oyster prices and oyster scarcity, said Lance Robinson, Texas Parks and Wildlife deputy director.
If oystermen return next season, the damage would be worse, Bodson said. "It won't sustain this year after year," he said.
Christmas Bay is a 9-square-mile haven for wildlife and the last bay on the Upper Texas Gulf Coast with significant seagrass beds, which provide a home for shrimp, crab and many varieties of fish. With the exception of a portion of West Galveston Bay, seagrass has largely disappeared on the upper coast.
"At least in the Galveston Bay system, this is one of the last unaltered, undisturbed areas," Bodson said.
But the recent oyster harvesting is putting this serene landscape at risk. Oyster boats endangered seagrass in Christmas Bay, said Scott Jones, Galveston Bay Foundation advocacy director. Jones said ATVs have splashed through fragile wetlands and harvesters used rookery islands as staging areas for heavy oyster sacks, driving away birds that nest on the islands and potentially crushing eggs,
To keep Christmas Bay pristine, the Outdoor Coastal Council last week petitioned the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission to permanently close the bay to oyster harvesting. Signatures on the petition included some of the most important oyster companies in Galveston Bay, which halted oyster harvesting after they understood the potential environmental damage.
"It is a pristine area and a small bay," said Clifford Hillman, CEO of Hillman Shrimp and Oyster Co. and one of the petition signers. "If there is damage to that bay, it should be closed to all and not just some."
The petition is signed by officials from six oyster companies and five environmental groups. "I'm really pleased with the broad scope of individuals who are in support of it," said Brad Bonney, Outdoor Coastal Council regional director.
The commission can vote to close the bay for environmental reasons, but Parks and Wildlife staff also can close bays to oystering if there are too many oysters below the legal 3-inch size. A crew began sampling Christmas Bay oysters last week, and the results should be available this week, said Christine Jensen, fisheries biologist.
Only nine of 34 oyster areas on the Texas coast remain open, and those nine are some of the smallest, Robinson said.
As the available oyster areas shrink, high prices lure oyster boats onto the water. The oyster prices in 2016 shot to $5.50 a pound, the highest on record, according to Parks and Wildlife figures. Oystermen say prices are similar this year.
The oyster beds were closed either for health reasons or to let the oyster reefs recover after more than eight years of natural disasters. Hurricane Ike in 2008 severely damaged the oyster reefs in Galveston Bay, which until that year supplied as much 90 percent of Texas' annual oyster harvest.
The oyster season, Nov. 1 to April 30, is nearly over, and last week a man and woman, who declined to give their names, were the only commercial oyster harvesters in Drum Bay. Christmas and Drum bays are so shallow that oysters, normally harvested with a dredge, must be plucked from the bottom by hand. The pair waded knee deep, bending over to collect oysters from the bottom, "I average about 9-12 bags a day," the woman said.
Many of the oyster crews were unaware of the environmental sensitivity of the area. Johnny Halili, owner of Prestige Oysters, said some of his oyster boats initially worked Christmas Bay but pulled out as soon as they learned of the environmental concerns. One of the Prestige boat captains, Gezim Halili, said he and his crew mistook marsh grass for seagrass, not realizing that seagrass was below the surface. He said that several other oyster companies pulled out along with Prestige, but at least four oyster companies continued to harvest oysters despite environmental concerns.
Christmas Bay was declared a coastal preserve in 1991, but the declaration carried no special enforcement provisions, said Robinson, the Texas Parks and Wildlife deputy director. Bodson said the bay was closed to shrimping, but not to oystering, probably because it wasn't being harvested for oysters commercially at the time.
It's unclear if any commercial oystering was done between 1991 and 2000, the year the Texas Department of State Health Services closed Christmas and Drum bays, which the department considers a single area, because of a high bacteria count. The department reopened the bay two years ago, but oyster companies were unaware of it being open until about February of this year.
With most of the oyster reefs closed for health reasons or to allow small oysters to mature, oyster companies this year sought advice from Texas Parks and Wildlife, said Lisa Halili, who owns Prestige Oysters with her husband, Johnny Halili. Parks and Wildlife pointed out that Christmas Bay was open, and the rush began.
Oyster boats from all over Texas swooped into Christmas and Drum bays, where they found huge oysters measuring as large as 6 inches.
Some boats began stacking heavy sacks of oysters on rookery islands in the bay, driving birds away from their nests and potentially crushing bird eggs. Bay residents and sport fishermen complained to Brazoria County officials about boat landings clogged by oyster company boat trailers. They also complained about a mound of trash piled by commercial oystermen.
Brazoria County officials could not be reached for comment, but Gezim Halili said that Commissioner Donald "Dude" Payne, county Parks Director Brian Frazier, a county engineer and a representative of the District Attorney's Office showed up at the boat ramp on Amigo Road early this month and announced that the ramp would be closed to commercial oyster boats.
About the same time Lisa Halili began receiving calls warning her that it was illegal to damage seagrass. She began calling environmentalists and learned about their concerns. Prestige Oysters promptly pulled its boats from the bay, and several other companies followed suit.
Hurricane Ike was not the only disaster to impact the future of oyster reefs in Galveston Bay.
The storm was followed by the BP oil spill in 2010, which led to intense harvesting of Texas oyster reefs because it was the only state unaffected by the spill. In 2011 a five-year drought began that increased bay salinity, creating a breeding ground for oyster disease and predators. That same year blooms of poisonous algae, known as red tide, closed many oyster reefs. In 2015 and 2016 heavy flooding pumped enormous amounts of fresh water into Galveston and surrounding bays, killing untold numbers of oysters.
By 2016 only 26 percent of a much-reduced Texas oyster harvest came from Galveston Bay. The total oyster catch in pounds fell from 6.13 million pounds in 2013 to 2.5 million pounds in 2016.
Robinson, the Parks and Wildlife official, said that the Texas oyster fleet is too large for the number of oysters that can be safely harvested without depleting the oyster reefs. Bills under consideration by the Legislature, House Bill 51 and Senate Bill 1566, would allow the state to buy back oyster licenses from fishermen to reduce pressure on oyster reefs. The legislation also would require a GPS on all oyster boats so that they can be tracked by Parks and Wildlife officials. The GPS would help the agency understand where oysters were being overharvested and show when a boat entered an area that was off limits.
Prestige owner Johnny Halili, who signed the petition to close Christmas Bay, said Parks and Wildlife's efforts to revive the oyster population are working and that many oyster reefs closed by the state will likely reopen next year to a bountiful harvest, taking pressure off Christmas Bay.