At 3 a.m. Wednesday, Veronica Briceno got on a bus to Austin.
Dozens of oyster industry workers boarded buses from Port Lavaca, Seadrift and San Leon. They journeyed to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department headquarters outside of Austin, where they protested the department’s proposed bay closures during the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission’s work session.
On Thursday, they did it again. Briceno said they were on the bus back to Port Lavaca when the commission announced that it would take no action on its department’s proposal.
“This was a big win for the oyster fishermen,” she said. They thought they’d be waiting months for a verdict, she added.
Briceno’s father was an oysterman, who worked the bays for 36 years. Several of the men who presented comments at the commission meeting on Thursday began their careers on her father’s boat.
“It was just overwhelming for them,” she said. “They were very emotional.”
Parks and Wildlife officials did not designate Ayres, Carlos and Mesquite bays as protected areas, but the oystermen are still prohibited from harvesting from the areas under the department’s traffic light policy.
Their decision not to approve the proposal proposed by Parks and Wildlife Director of Coastal Fisheries Robin Riechers disappointed many conservationists and sport fishers.
“I thought it was a pretty weak response,” said JT Van Zandt, a fly fishing guide from Rockport. Van Zandt took issue with what he described as pressure from state representatives, restaurant and commercial interests to delay the bay closures. He pointed to the overwhelming public support for the proposal — 79% of respondents were in favor at the time of the meeting — and the efforts and recommendations of the department’s own scientists as reasons to adopt the proposal.
During the public comment portion of Thursday’s meeting, advocates for both sides were evenly represented. A smaller number of commenters asked the commission to table their decision. State Reps. Briscoe Cain, District 128, and Mayes Middleton, District 23, as well as Lisa Halili, vice president of Prestige Oysters in Dickinson, teleconferenced into the meeting to request that the commission delay their decision and seek more input about the economic and environmental impacts of closing the bay.
Credit: Source link
