Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

An article by Melissa Gaskill in the June issue of Texas parks and Wildlife magazine, explores the value of artificial reefs. These are retired structures like oil platforms that create much-needed hard substrate in the gulf. She asks whether the reefs increase marine populations, or simply aggregate existing populations.

07— The first thing that happens when you put any kind of structure in the water is that fish species will congregate around it; they’re attracted to that.

Dale Shively is Texas Parks and Wildlife program leader for artificial reefs. He says congregating is just the beginning.

20— There also is production that goes on. Once you get that marine life growing, you’re creating an ecosystem. You’re not only bringing fish species in, but they stay there, live there, they spawn there. You can find the juveniles on there. That doesn’t mean that some of those fish species don’t migrate away at times. But they actually use it for various life stages.

Through a monitoring program, Shively says they’re attempting to quantify various fish species by relative abundance.

21— There is also a debate about how valuable are oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. There are a lot of fishermen who claim that you remove these and you’re destroying the red snapper population. There’s another school of thought that the red snapper were here originally without the oil platforms. But, there’s no doubt that the red snapper population has increased since we have more structure out there.

Read about this debate in the June issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our Series. For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.