Published in the Victoria Advocate on March 24, 2022. View the story here.

AUSTIN, Texas — Local oysters will remain in limbo.

After hearing four hours of public comments on Thursday, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission declined to permanently close Ayres, Carlos and Mesquite bays to commercial oyster harvesting.

The commission also declined to designate them as protected areas.

Commission Chairman Arch “Beaver” Aplin said officials had “stopped the bleeding” of the reef areas by prohibiting harvesting under the department’s traffic light policy. He said this bought time to define and develop metrics for successful reef rehabilitation.

These would be established by a diverse task force of stakeholders, including environmental experts and members of the commercial oyster industry.

Before removing the item from the agenda, Aplin emphasized the urgency of developing a framework to inform future decision-making before the oyster season begins again on Nov. 1, adding that the issue’s importance went beyond the three bays in question.

The decision came after dozens of advocates presented their comments for or against the reef closures at Parks and Wildlife headquarters outside Austin.

Commission members breezed through the first three agenda items before Director of Coastal Fisheries Robin Riechers recapped the department’s proposal to close the three bays. Riechers’ presentation included a breakdown of the public comments Parks and Wildlife officials had received about the proposal since it began soliciting them last month. Preceding agenda items averaged about a dozen comments. The oyster question yielded 2,670.

About 79% of respondents supported the proposal to close the reefs, according to Parks and Wildlife’s data. About 20% opposed, and 1% said they were neutral. But the two sides offering comment on Thursday morning were evenly represented.

Commercial oystermen and their supporters, many of whom spoke in Spanish through a translator, implored the commission to work with them to determine solutions. Some of them denounced Parks and Wildlife for what they described as the agency’s failure to provide important information about regulations and communicate to the largely Spanish-speaking group of workers.

Many said the regular dredging of reefs that occurs during harvesting was essential to keeping oyster habitats healthy.

Jennifer Pollack, HRI chair for Coastal Conservation and Restoration at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, pushed back on this narrative.

“There’s no data out there to indicate that dredging a reef is beneficial for a reef,” said Pollack, whom the commission recalled to the podium for questions following their executive session. Pollack said that she “scoured the literature” looking for evidence to back the claim when she heard it come up during Parks and Wildlife’s March 3 meeting.

Pollack told the commission that her position with Texas A&M University Corpus Christi prevented her from advocating for any side of the issue.

Voices in favor of the closures belonged to sport and recreational fishermen and representatives from a slew of environmental advocacy groups, including the Coastal Conservation Association and the National Wildlife Federation.

State Reps. Mayes Middleton, District 23, and Briscoe Cain, District 128, both addressed the commission by phone. They urged Parks and Wildlife to table their decision and seek more input from members of the oyster industry about both the economic and environmental impacts of closing the bays.

By the time the commission reached their decision to do just that several hours later, most of the advocates had already spoken their piece, and left.

Parks and Wildlife officials began seeking public input in February about closing the reefs between San Antonio and Aransas bays. Officials encouraged oystermen, environmentalists, recreational fishers and others to submit comments online or by phone for consideration by the commission. The agency also held public meetings in Port Lavaca, Rockport and Galveston on March 3.

During the Port Lavaca meeting, oystermen decried the proposal. Environmental advocates and sports fishermen were generally in favor.

The potential closures of the three reef areas come after the department prohibited harvesting from areas in Galveston, San Antonio, Aransas and Matagorda bays throughout the 2021-22 oyster season.

Parks and Wildlife officials cited the lack of market-size oysters found during their sample dredges as the reason for those closures. Oystermen and commercial fishing advocates cast suspicion on the agency’s sampling process during both the March 3 meeting and a protest at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department office in Victoria on Feb. 9.

During the March 3 public meeting, Parks and Wildlife Upper Coast Regional Director Kelley Kowal said the proposed closures were not due to the dearth of market-size oysters, but the potential harms to other habitats caused by over-harvesting.