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- I just never could get away from the water.
Starting back when I was 10 or 12 years old,
I did a lot of dock work.
I used to wash my grandfather
and my great uncle's boat for 50 cents.
So, I've been through it all.
You gotta wanna do it, you gotta wanna be in this business.
I've been going out there so long,
it's just part of me now.
- I've been fishing in the Gulf of Mexico since 1962.
When we were growing up, my cousins and I
spent thousands of hours in the Gulf of Mexico.
It was a place of freedom for us.
It was a place where we could go where we wanted to go,
do what we wanted to do.
We challenged the elements
and figured out how to catch the fish.
- I'm a Charter Boat Captain.
There can be a really big difference
from one day to the next.
When the fish are plentiful,
the clients really think you know what you're doing, okay?
But when there's no fish,
they think you're not even trying or anything,
there's just no fish.
It's a really tough business to be in.
- The situation for fishing in state waters
was just terrible.
The Gulf's bottom is flat mud plain
that doesn't provide food or habitat for little fishes.
We decided we were gonna do something about it.
[water bubbling]
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- Certain fish, especially the ones that we like to eat,
use hard structure as their habitat.
But we've been trolling the sea floor now for many decades
and with that comes a disturbance to the sea floor
and any hard structure that's brittle can also be destroyed.
And so all we're left with are soft corals
that only get a foot or so high at most.
If we're left with that option,
you're not going to have a reef
in anyone's lifetime around here.
And if you are it's gonna be very small.
Another option is to put hard substrate down on the bottom
and build an artificial reef.
And these have been quite successful
throughout the Gulf of Mexico using concrete and steel.
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- RGV Reef is located about 13 nautical miles
north of the South Padre Island Jetties.
To create an artificial reef,
first, you have to gather up material.
The first material that we put in RGV Reef
was the shrimp boat in the tug.
We put down 64,000 cinder blocks to make nursery reef.
And about another 3,000 tons of other concrete material.
We have stacked up here,
15,000 concrete railroad ties donated by BNSF.
We're going to drop these like tangled pick-up sticks
in the reef, and we're gonna make all those graduated
stepping stones of habitat that will carry these fish
through their life stages.
These fish are desperate for habitat
because it means life or death for them.
If you deploy that material,
it lasts for decades and nobody ever has to cut the grass
or pick up the trash.
- We surveyed the RGV Reef before any material was put down
and there were very few fish down there.
And so in terms of fish numbers,
the RGV Reef has been a success.
There are a lot of red snapper juveniles,
and most importantly,
there are post-settlement recruit red snapper showing up
right after they settle out of the water column.
This means for future generations to come,
there'll be more red snapper showing up on this reef.
- The thing about building a reef like this
is that it's damned difficult.
Where we need money is in the marine transport.
That's the piece that I have been unable to get donated.
That's the expensive piece.
That's what's stopping us
is the boat that takes the material off shore.
We gotta pay for it.
- I tell you what, when they first said,
we're gonna spend $10 million in 10 years building a reef,
I'm going, "Oh my God,
these guys are crazy."
But we're booked up.
The bay fishing boats are booked up.
They're doing it.
- GARY: There's 750,000 saltwater anglers
in the state of Texas.
Forty-four thousand of them live in the Rio Grande Valley.
If there's no fish,
there's not gonna be a fishing industry.
There's not gonna be tourism.
We use that to sell the reef,
but what really counts is the next generation
to be able to go offshore and catch a fish.
- CAPTAIN RAY: If there's more fish,
my clients are gonna have more memories.
They're gonna have more conversation with their friends.
They're gonna send more people to us.
They'll come back.
Everybody can fish.
Everybody.
- All of us are looking to make the Gulf of Mexico better.
All of us received tremendous joy from the Gulf of Mexico
when we were younger and had no way to give back.
That's what pushes us.
I personally think about a little boy or a little girl
that's gonna go fishing and catch a fish.
That's what I care about.
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