[seagulls squawk]
- NARRATOR: Oyster season is underway in Lavaca Bay.
- MAURICIO BLANCO: This is my home port right here,
Port Lavaca, Texas.
[dredge clanks]
It's been a pretty good spot over the years.
But it's a grind.
[chain grinding]
This is what I do for a long time.
That was 30 years yesterday.
That's what I've been fishing over here this bay.
We got so much salt in our blood,
that's what I love to do.
If you love what you do, I mean,
you are going to stay for a long time like me.
Thirty years.
[clanking]
They culling the oysters.
What they are doing right now is,
they are making sure that they got three-inch oysters.
The state law says that they have to be three inches.
Plus, you see it's a cluster is what they come up,
they don't come pretty like when you put them on your table.
- NARRATOR: Historically, Texas has been one of the top states
in oyster production,
dating as far back to the late 1800s.
Texas reefs held what seemed like an endless supply.
But times have changed.
[chain grinds]
Over the years the daily sack limits have been cut back.
- MAURICIO: It used to be 150 sack a day.
- NARRATOR: Now Mauricio can keep a fifth of that.
- MAURICIO: Now it's went down from 150 sacks to 90 sacks,
and then from 90 sacks, they went down to 50 sacks,
this year the state limit is 30 sacks.
So, every year we getting less, and less, and less.
And the bad part is that fuel,
it don't go down, it goes up and up.
[dredge slams]
But like right now, we probably going to make
20 sacks all day long.
Maybe.
- Recent science has indicated that really most oyster reefs
are operating right on the border of sustainability.
Everybody realizes that something needs to be done.
- NARRATOR: This part of Galveston Bay is getting
some much-needed TLC, in the form of a new reef bottom.
- BILL: The key to restoring the habitat is putting
fresh cultch out there.
Cultch can be any materials that oysters can grow on.
- NARRATOR: This reef's getting 7,000 tons
of crushed limestone.
- Looks good, it's really amazing how your able
to operate this giant piece of machinery on a barge.
This is really important because the oyster reefs
are in pretty bad shape.
They've been suffering from a number of stressors,
including drought and hurricanes.
On top of that, there is a lot of heavy fishing pressure
being put on.
Pretty sad state of affairs for the oyster reefs currently.
So, these materials provide a nice clean,
what we call a 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.
- NARRATOR: Galveston Bay is not alone.
Many Texas bays are temporarily closed
to oystering as the reefs recover.
[police siren chirps]
- GAME WARDEN: You the captain today.
- NARRATOR: To protect the bays as they rest,
Game Wardens are on the water.
This area is open to oystering,
but nearby San Antonio Bay is closed and off limits.
- Today what we did,
we tried a different technique that we hadn't tried yet.
We actually stuck a boat in the water that was an
undercover vessel.
And he actually drove out into San Antonio Bay,
hid up in the brush for a little bit.
- T X four zero five one.
- JASON: And he drove down that line and basically
wrote down the TX numbers of every boat that was located
in the San Antonio Bay system side.
- They were too close to land and they were in closed waters,
and they don't have any tags.
[siren chirps]
- GAME WARDEN: State Game Warden.
Y'all were in closed waters this morning!
- Me? - Yes.
- No! - Yes.
- JASON: It's not all the oyster industry that's
actually doing this, there's a few bad apples.
- GAME WARDEN: He observed you in close waters.
- No!
- GAME WARDEN: Yes, you're going to have to
dump the oysters too!
- JASON: If we let them do what they want, then they
would take too much of the resource and there wouldn't be
any more of the resource left.
- GAME WARDEN: Ok, one ticket for oystering in
closed waters, ok, contact Judge Hunt.
- GAME WARDEN: You have your license on you.
- JASON: If they overharvest an area, it does them
no good the next year and the year after that,
and the year after that.
Short term gain, long term loss is what we're looking at!
- It's going to be nothing.
How the bays going to come back?
If you kill the chicken, you ain't going to have eggs.
We need those oysters in restricted areas for them
to spawn and get oyster everywhere.
It's the bottom line.
You kill the chicken, you ain't going to get no eggs.
- NARRATOR: To protect the reefs,
at times there's more bays closed to oystering,
than those that are open.
Which adds to the grind.
- MAURICIO: You know, you leave one small area open,
everybody gonna put pressure on the area,
because it's the only thing is open.
And that's what happened right now.
[tapping]
When you overfish you're resources,
they just gonna disappear.
A lot of small ones.
This oyster be ready within four weeks,
they gonna reach three inches,
they have to go back to the water.
This bay, for right now, should been closed for two months.
They keep it wide open,
and there's nothing out there anymore.
You know by the time they close it,
it's going to be too late.
- NARRATOR: It's hopefully not too late.
A historic restoration plan is in place.
All bays in Texas will now get some much-needed help.
As a new law requires oyster dealers to either pay a
per sack restoration fee
or recycle their old shell.
Supplier, Curtis Miller, opts to use his own shell.
- I felt that would be the quickest way to,
you know, see some results.
This was a way to see the quickest turnaround
right here at home.
- NARRATOR: This reef recovery plan now guarantees
new cultch will be placed in depleted Texas bays.
This shell is on its way back to Lavaca Bay.
- CURTIS: We're going to put it out there in this area,
it's not really a viable working area now,
but we're hoping since it's a hard bottom,
the shell will create a new reef that we can work
in a couple years.
[water spraying]
- This is going to happen all up and down the
coast in every major oyster producing bay.
This is just the very beginning of something that will be an
ongoing effort and should make a really big difference
in the ecology of the bays.
- If everybody up and down the coast starts doing this,
which I believe you're going to start seeing,
that'll make more reefs in Galveston Bay,
more reefs in Matagorda area,
more reefs in Rockport area,
more reefs in our area,
and the boats will be able to stay home.
- MAURICIO: We need to change the habit.
We have to change the way we think,
for those bays to give them a chance to come back,
we have to do all those things you know.
For resources to be there,
just, you got to take responsibility that's all.
- NARRATOR: And for Maurcio, a restored Lavaca Bay
can't come soon enough.
His haul today barely covered the costs for his crew.
- MAURICIO: Well, we managed to make a day.
At least we're here.
You know, nobody got hurt.
[oysters dumped in sack]
We were shooting for 20,
as you can see we didn't have 20.
We had 17, but the boat didn't break.
We happy.
We ready to go home now!
- NARRATOR: But you can bet he'll be back here tomorrow.
- I enjoy it.
Every single day that I'm out there,
I'm enjoy it.
I'm happy.
And that's the spirit of the fisherman,
it don't matter how broke you are,
if you love what you are doing, you going to keep doing it,
and that's me!
- NARRATOR: This project was funded in part by a grant
from the Sport Fish Restoration Program.