Passport to Texas

Photo by Glen Mills, TPWD

Aoudad Sheep Study Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Aoudads, also known as Barbary Sheep, were originally imported to Texas from North Africa as game animal over 50 years ago. But for native species like Mule deer and Desert Bighorn Sheep, the ever-increasing Aoudad population has become a threat.

They pose, not only a competition threat, as far as competition for resource, but they can also be socially disruptive.

Froylan Hernandez is Desert Bighorn program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife. His team initiated a tri-species study to determine if Aoudads could also introduce a disease threat.

This is the first project of its kind of Bighorn Sheep, Mule deer and Aoudad. We’re looking at some of these areas that have Aoudad infestations and taking tissue samples and investigating potential diseases that could pose threats to our native wildlife.

Disease aside, the sheer number of Aoudad have already changed the landscape.

Sometimes we’ll see them in herds of two to three hundred in one herd and so they can definitely degrade the habitat rather quickly. And it’s almost like a gravel bed out on the hillside. It’s peeled, I mean essentially bare ground.

The study will provide valuable information to biologists and help educate landowners on the importance of managing Aoudad populations.

The Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Always be sure to read the package.

Virus from Imported Bait Shrimp Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

It’s tempting to use frozen shrimp from the grocery store as bait for your next fishing trip…but don’t do it. They may be imported and possibly harmful to our native crustaceans.

We don’t want any kind of imported shrimp being used as bait, because the potential of diseases that could be there that could impact our native stock.

Robert Adami is a TPW coastal fisheries biologist based in Corpus Christi.

One of the diseases we’re concerned with is white spot syndrome virus. We saw this way back in the early 90s in the Asian countries. And then it slowly moved on to Latin American countries. And back in 1995, we did see one [shrimp] farm with a small amount of white spot in South Texas. But we have not seen anything like that since then.

Check labels when buying bait shrimp to verify they’re from the Gulf of Mexico. While farmed shrimp are at highest risk of infection, wild shrimp and crustaceans are not immune. But, humans are.

The white spot virus doesn’t affect humans in any way. The only thing is can affect is the crustaceans: your shrimp, crawfish, crayfish, [crabs]. It won’t even transfer to fishes.

The virus could have severe consequences for native crustaceans if introduced via infected non-native shrimp.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Sampling Gulf Oysters

Rebuilding Texas' Oyster Habitat Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Texas has been one of the country’s top oyster producing states since the late 1800’s. Oysterman, Mauricio Blanco has worked the Port Lavaca region for over 30 years.

It’s been a pretty good place over the years. We got so much salt in our blood. That’s what I love to do

But, declining limits on commercial harvests have been signaling a problem for years.

Most oyster reefs are operating on the border of sustainability. Everyone realizes that something needs to be done.

Bill Rodney is a costal ecologist

They’ve been suffering from a number of stressors including drought and hurricanes. On top of that, there’s a lot of fishing pressure being put on.

A historic restoration plan is now in place to rebuild the reefs. A new law requires oyster dealers to recycle their old shell or pay a restoration fee.

The key to restoring the habitat is putting fresh cultch out there. Cultch can be any material that oysters can grow on.

Crushed limestone and recycled oyster shells make an excellent substrate for oyster larva to attach to and grow into spat, which are baby oysters

The site will be closed to commercial harvest for two years, allowing the baby oysters time to grow to adulthood. By the fall, there should be millions of baby oysters growing on this rock out here.

The sport fish restoration program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

CCA Incubation Room. Image courtesy of Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine.

Hatchery Raised Red Drum and Spotted Sea Trout Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The CCA Marine Development Center in Corpus Christi produces juvenile red drum and spotted sea trout for release into Texas bays. They do it by tricking wild brood stock.

We put them through a 150-day light and temperature cycle to condense their year down and get them to spawn when we want them to.

Ashley Fincannon is Hatchery Manager

It’s volitional spawning so they are just freely spawning freely in the tanks at night. When the eggs are fertilized, they are buoyant, and they end up at the top of the tanks and end up going in to our egg collectors.

We take those eggs into our incubator room where we hatch them out. They are pretty rapidly developing fish so if we had fish that spawned last night, by this afternoon around six, those fish would be hatching out, they would be feeding on their yolk sack, by three days, they have consumed their yolk sack, their eyes are formed, their mouth is formed, their gut is formed and they are ready to go out and eat.

On the third day, we stock them to our outdoor rearing ponds where we grow them out about 35-40 days where they reach that targeted 35-40-millimeter mark for size at release.

Go to the Texas Parks and Wildlife website to learn more about the hatchery or to plan a visit; search for CCA Marine Development Center.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Guadalupe Bass (Micropterus treculii)

Good for the Fish, Good for the River Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas.

Anglers like Courtney and Brandon Robinson are chasing Guadalupe bass, the state fish of Texas.

Fish on! This is why I love catching Guads. They’re little fish but they use the river to fight.

Guadalupe bass once seemed headed for extinction. In the 1970s, state biologists stocked non-native smallmouth bass in Texas rivers. They didn’t expect the smallmouths would cross-breed with native fish. But they did, producing hybrid offspring that were no longer pure Guadalupes.

From 1990s through roughly 2010 almost a million Guadalupe bass were stocked in the river and it drove down the hybridization rates dramatically.

Tim Birdsong once played pro baseball for the Cincinnati Reds. Today he leads Texas Parks and Wildlife efforts to restore river watersheds.

 [The] Guadalupe bass is representative of that whole set of species and some of those are considered imperiled; they may only occur in one river and nowhere else in the world. And it’s a little bit more difficult to get enthusiasm around conserving a minnow or conserving an imperiled freshwater mussel, but what’s good for Guadalupe bass is generally good for those other species.

Learn more about the Guadalupe Bass in July on our podcast Under the Texas Sky. Find it on Spotify, iTunes and other places where you get your podcasts.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.