Free
The Only Island in Texas with more Sargassum than Sarcasm
FREE
The Island Moon
Issue 529
June 5, 2014 Around The Island By Dale Rankin editor@islandmoon.com
It was a big weekend on out little sandbar as the beaches were packed; both with people and a Sargassum invasion of Biblical proportions which mounted up in odiferous piles and left us all a little wateryeyed. Just when the experts thought it would make landfall north of us the east wind came back and here it came. Unfortunately it doesn’t look much better for the near future.
The voice of The Island since 1996
Island projects
ISAC Moves to Restrict Driving on Seawall Beach
It’s out there folks and it looks like it’s headed our way.
Geomys bursarius As you move about our Island these last two weeks of spring you may notice that our Geomys bursarius friends are very active hereabouts. That’s right, it’s mating season for our friends the Pocket Gophers. It’s the spring air that puts a little spring in the step of our scurrying and vertically challenged little neighbors.
By Dale Rankin
The Island Strategic Action Committee (ISAC), an advisory committee to the Corpus Christi City Council, on Tuesday took a definitive step toward restricting driving on the beach along the Michael J. Ellis Seawall.
The plan calls for wooden bollards to limit driving to two lanes from the north end of the seawall, southward, on the beach to a point adjacent to the seawall parking lot. Under the plan, no vehicles would be allowed on the beach south of that point. The move comes fourteen years after an agreement was made between the city, seawall property owners, and the Texas Legislature to amend the Texas Natural Resources Code by which the property owners would buy and donate to the city the land required for a seawall parking lot in exchange for the removal of vehicles from the beach. The property owners, through a self-assessment, paid developer Paul Schexnailder $430,000 for the land to build the parking lot which opened in 2007; in 2008 voters approved a plan for restricting traffic on the beach with the use of wooden bollards creating the traffic lanes, and extending northward parallel to the waterline, to within 600 feet of the south Packery Jetty creating headin parking adjacent to a pedestrian beach. The plan has been on the books since then but with no action from the city to implement it.
The last attempt at implementation was in 2012 when city planners wanted Island taxpayers, through the Island Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, to pay the estimated $104,000 to purchase the wooden bollards. ISAC members at the time balked at the plan, pointing out that the $104,000 price tag was $678 per bollard and the city, citing a lack of funds, dropped the project. At their Tuesday meeting ISAC members voted to “request that the city enact the 2008 ordinance.” In attendance were District 4 City Council member Colleen McIntyre, and At-Large members Chad Magill, and Lillian Riojas. Magill said after the meeting he will place the matter on a council agenda. The council will have the option of enacting any or all of the plan, as long as it is in compliance with the GLO rules; major changes would require another council vote, plus GLO approval which could take up to a year. City staffers at the ISAC meeting asked for a delay until more study on the width of the beach can be done, and to resolve discrepancies in language in the bonds approving the digging of Packery Channel and the existing city ordinance which alternately lists the width of the beach at 150 feet, and 180 respectively. The beach width is now maintained by the dredging of Packery Channel and the placement of the dredge sand on the beach along the seawall. Since Packery Channel opened in 2005 the width of the beach there has increased dramatically.
The mating season of Pocket Gophers in Texas ranges from January to September but for Island Pocket Gophers May and June are the months to get busy. Here are some Pocket Gopher fun facts you can use to amaze your friends if you can find a way to steer the conversation in that direction, like, ‘I was reading in the Moon…” Pocket Gophers don’t have pockets in their pants because they don’t wear pants. They wear fur which has little fur-lined pouches outside of the mouth, one on each side, which are capable of being turned inside out, and are used for carrying food, and sometimes sand, and that’s where they get their name. Females give birth to one to six young after a gestation period of around thirty days, so expect to see a lot of little bitty Pocket Gophers running around in July and August. In the meantime try not to run over any of them as they move about from bar to bar searching for their significant other.
Projects continued on A5
It’s just one more reason to read the Island Moon, to keep up with the predilections of Island rodents.
For research scientists, archaeologists and students from Texas A&M University at Galveston, the deep-sea discovery of three 19th Century ships only 180 miles from their campus was like finding treasure in a new world. But they didn’t have to sail to the A cannon found at a shipwreck site, nor did they have to take the 4,300 foot present during discoveries of what plunge to the ocean’s depths. Instead, are now known as the Monterrey they explored the shipwrecks, while Shipwrecks. firmly anchored to Texas A&M’s “I grew up hearing about pioneers Exploration Command Center in the discovering the new world and heart of Galveston’s campus. astronauts going into space,” Thomas Heathman, a marine Heathman said. “There’s that same biology doctoral student and part of Shipwrecks continued on A5 a new breed of virtual explorers, was
Solar Shingles – Who Knew?! Island home is the first in the city to have them
Seawall driving
The latest round of cheap talk, patter, and jive came Tuesday at the ISAC meeting where the city staff wants to wait until this fall to make a decision after hearing a report from A&M Corpus Christi on how wide the beach is expected to be in the future. This is despite ten years of such reports which already give us that information. It is just the latest in a long line of foot dragging that has cars driving at forty miles per hour literally in arms reach of people sitting in beach chairs despite a vote by citizens in 2008 to put a stop to it.
By Dale Rankin The Island is home to the first house in Corpus Christi with solar shingles. “I’ve been watching this technology since it began to be developed in 2000,” said Islander Roy Tansill, who just had the shingles installed at his house in on Pionciana last week. “They just became commercially available in February, but in this area only in the past few weeks.”
The frustrating part of the matter is that there is no opposition to the move except inertia at City Hall;
In fact the technology is so new that the Windstorm Insurance inspector who came to Tansill’s house had to call Austin to find out what the protocol was for installation. Tansill, a retired statistician from Baltimore
Around continued on A5
Shingles continued on A3
Inside the Moon...
Last year’s Atlantic hurricane season had the fewest numbers of hurricanes since 1982 with fourteen tropical and subtropical storms that formed in the Atlantic and only two became hurricanes, but neither became major hurricanes. On the Rocks A6
While the number of tropical and subtropical storms was above the average of 12, the number of hurricanes and major hurricanes was way below their averages of six and three, respectively. (Major hurricanes are categories 3 and above.) Last week we reported that NOAA has predicted (actually we said “preducted” in the Moon Typo of the Week) and this week we look at the season which began this week through the prism of the Farmers’ Almanac.
Eat Texas Local A6
Boathouse 1st Anniversary Party A11
What’s in store this season? The Farmers’ Almanac is predicting four possible tropical storms affecting regions this season. One is an early season storm by the end of June along the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast Coasts, a second during the third week of July near or along the Atlantic Seaboard, a third in midSeptember in New England, and a late season tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico and possibly the East
Around continued on A16
Live Music A18
A little Island history
Texas Horse Marines Captured Ships from Horseback
It was this week 178 years ago that the Texas Horse Marines, a mounted company of Texas Rangers in the service of the Texas revolutionary army rode into Texas history. In 1836 the rangers, under the command of Maj. Isaac Watts Burton, had been dispatched by Gen. Thomas J. Rusk to watch a stretch of the Gulf Coast south of San Antonio Bay. When they heard of a suspicious vessel in Copano Bay, the rangers hid on the shore and sent up distress signals.
As you will see from the story in this issue the City of Corpus Christi continues to drag its feet on a promise made to property owners fourteen years ago and approved by voters six years ago to restrict driving on the beach at the Michael J. Ellis Seawall.
Farmers’ Almanac Predicts Late Season Gulf Storm
“This ordinance has been on the books for six years and we’re still talking about it instead of doing anything,” said ISAC member Greg Smith who proposed the vote to enact it. “And it’s been fourteen years since
Monterrey Shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico Explored by ROVs Pocket Gopher
New Pirate Ship Sails into Port Aransas
Island bridges, water line, park improvements
By a unanimous vote the committee requested that the city council enact an ordinance approved by voters citywide in 2008 and approved by both the city council and the Texas General Land Office to restrict driving to two lanes on the north end of the seawall and prohibit driving where the beach is less than 150 feet wide. Offshore boaters report that last Sunday a mass of the stuff covered the Gulf from thirty to forty five miles off our shore. A flyover of the Gulf of Mexico by Texas A&M Galveston last Sunday showed several large mats off our shores and to the south headed our way, even as the stuff was already piled up all along Island beaches.
Weekly
Considering how much Texas history has occurred on horseback it isn’t surprising to learn that one of the Republic’s greatest naval victories was achieved by 20 or so
armed and mounted rangers known to history as the Texas Horse Marines. This little-known band of Texas patriots, under the command of Maj. Isaac Watts Burton, is believed to be the only Marine unit in history to receive a tomahawk as standard issue and perhaps the only one to capture three ships while riding horses and without firing a shot. The “soldiers at sea” in this instance had been dispatched to the Texas coast by Gen. Thomas J. Rusk, who feared that Mexican troops might land on the Texas coast. This was in June of 1836, three months after Texas’ decisive victory at San Jacinto but the Mexican army was still in Texas. A Mexican insurrection was very much on the minds of the new Texas government.
While patrolling an area between the mouth of the Guadalupe River and Mission Bay, Burton got word of a suspicious vessel sailing into Copano Bay. Burton and his rangers hurried to the area and issued distress signals to the ship, a schooner named Watchman, which may have also run aground on a sandbar. The rangers did not respond when the ship hoisted American and then Texan colors, but responded to the Mexican colors. Thinking the signals came from distressed Mexicans, the captain of the Watchman and four of his sailors rowed ashore in a small boat to aid their countrymen. Imagine their surprise when about 20 Texans on
History continued on A4