Inside the Moon
Valley of Fire A4
Fishing A7 & A15
The
Issue 581
Island Moon
The voice of The Island since 1996
June 4, 2015
Around The Island By Dale Rankin
Turtles A16
Sports A8
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By Dale Rankin
Out on the Left Coast they got the Crips and the Bloods. Up Waco way they got motorcycle gangs shooting holes in each other. Here on our little sandbar we got feuding shark fishermen. That’s right folks, the Great Shark Feud of 2015 has busted loose on Bob Hall Pier.
After months of wrangling, the move to place a traffic light on SPID at the Aquarius Street intersection cleared the last apparent hurdle and may be in place as early as the end of 2015.
District 4 City Councilwoman Colleen McIntyre, who has actively pushed for the installation of the light, and Mayor Nelda Martinez both attended the meeting.
The way for the light was cleared when the Island Strategic Action Committee Tuesday declined to reverse an earlier vote, cast by the previous ISAC members last December, for approval of the light. ISAC members in June voted to approve the light pending additional traffic studies by San Antonio developer Walter Busby who owns a five-acre tract of land on the east side of the intersection where he plans to build a 101-room Hampton Inn and a retail development.
Nine Island residents spoke at the meeting in favor of the light, most of whom live in on the northern end of The Island and must pass through the intersection to enter the JFK Causeway. They cited heavy, highspeed traffic on SPID as posing a danger without a light to slow the flow.
“They’re acting like a bunch of little bitty crybabies,” he said. “And you can quote me on that.” The best we can tell it started the year before last when there were allegations of cheating during Sharkathon when a sharker was accused of putting his bait out early. There were lie detectors involved and bragging rights at stake. Cheating at Sharkaton, if it did indeed happen, falls somewhere between spitting into the wind and tugging on Superman’s cape; you just don’t do it. It ain’t right. And in the same vein as two history professors fighting over how many smooth bore cannons Napoleon had at Waterloo; the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small.
“Right now we have a deal with Starbucks,” he said at the Tuesday meeting.
Only one Islander spoke against the light, Ernie Buttler, owner of Snoopy’s Pier who said he fears the light will back up traffic on SPID toward the JFK Causeway. The biggest question about the light, which was called for in a 2011 Island
Light continued on A5
Pizza-Sized Tar Spots Wash Up in Kleberg
“They were setting up tarps out there to block the wind and getting territorial,” he says. “I made them stop that. But it just keeps getting worse.”
“You got yourself a turf war out there,” they said. They ran one group off who headed to Horace Caldwell Pier in Port A where, apparently, the turf is still up for grabs. “We’ve got families walking off the pier because these guys are screaming obscenities at each other,” Scott says. “They have some kind of longstanding feud and they’ve brought it to the pier. Alcohol just puts more gas in the shark tank.” Alcohol is banned at Bob Hall but according to Scott that word hasn’t found its way to the ears of the sharkers yet. Where a nod and a wink has historically been directed at fisherpersons who slipped a couple of cold ones in their ice chest and drank from a Whataburger cup, now Constables are checking ice chests and Scott is talking to the County Attorney’s office about instituting a lifetime ban for multiple offenders. “This can’t continue,” he says. “Something has to be done to put a stop to this.” In the meantime the Great Shark continues.
Fire in the Sky It’s not too early to start planning your 4th of July deck party as the Island Blast! fireworks display will go off again this year at 0-dark-thirty at the end of Whitecap. There is still time to contribute to the fireworks fund. We’ll see you there. In the meantime, say hello if you see us Around The Island.
Island Spring Break Traffic Count
During the rain-soak Spring Break in March the city placed nine locations around The Island. Here are the counts for Monday March 16, the only data available at press time.
Commemorative Air Force Opens Museum in Aransas Pass on D-Day World War II warbirds on display this Saturday in Aransas Pass The United States produced nearly 300,000 aircraft during World War II and today very few are still in flying condition and almost all of them are owned by the Texas Commemorative Air Force. They will be on display this Saturday, June 6 (D-Day), from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at McCambell –Porter Airport in Aransas Pass as the CAF opens the squadron’s new Hangar and Museum of Military Aircraft.
And now things have escalated. Loud cursing and dead bait fish on the pier are merely bad manners. But Scott says The Great Shark Feud has gone way beyond that. The sharkers like to work at night and use kayaks to take their bait way out where the big sharks hang out but launching their kayaks from the pier is against the rules. So is drinking. So is threating people with sharp knives and according to Scott all of those are part of the Great Shark Feud of 2015.
On Memorial Day Scott himself called in the law dogs – all of themhe called the Game Wardens, CCPD, and the Nueces County Constable.
Photo by Brandi Grahl
Island to See The Light
editor@islandmoon.com
For the past few months Nueces County Coastal Parks Director Scott Cross has been playing daddy to two groups of angry shark fishermen armed with long sharp knives fighting turf wars at the end of Bob Hall Pier. From the looks of things the knives involved are considerably sharper than the wits.
Live Music A18
More photos on A3 For the third time in two weeks cleanup crews were called to area beaches to clean up tar balls that have been washing ashore. The latest incident was Thursday when these tar spots, the largest so far, washed up in Kleberg County just south of Bob Hall Pier. They ranged up to three feet in diameter and were two to three inches thick with the viscosity of soft wax. Crews last week collected small tar balls in about the same area as well as Port Aransas. A spokesperson for the Texas General Land Office said samples of the tar have been collected and sent for testing but, as of press time, no results are available to indicate whether the tar is coming from natural of manmade sources.
A little Island history
“We are all very happy about our new facility” said 2015 Col Pearson Knolle, Unit Leader of The Maxine Flournoy Third Coast Squadron of the Commemorative Air Force,. “The Squadron has worked hard in order to make the new facility become a
P-51 Mustang reality.” The new facility includes a 12,500sf hangar, 3,000sf museum, offices and conference room, vehicle parking for 50 cars and large tarmac area for the unit’s planes. In 1957 a group of World War II veterans in the Rio Grande Valley
Air Force continued on A6
Baffin Rocks!
Editor’s note: Bobbie Kimbrell has lived in Flour Bluff since 1942 and was a commercial fisherman until his retirement a few years ago. By Bobbie Kimbrell Unbeknownst to a lot of fishermen or boat enthusiasts there are two “Points of Rocks” in the Laguna Madre. One of the points of rocks is the reef that runs out about 100 yards or so north of Penascal Point where Baffin Bay meets the Laguna Madre. The other Point of Rocks, as is shown incorrectly on the Padre Island National Seashore National Geographic Maps, is located where the mot northern part of Baffin Bay meets the Laguna Madre a few feet east of the Intracoastal Canal. Those rocks are covered over with dredge mud now. The “Mail Box” is a marker made of three cedar stakes jabbed into the sand bottom of a sand reef extending east of the Intracoastal Canal and tied together at the top with a wooden arrow pointing to the east, was the marker where, heading south you turn east to avoid hitting the point of rocks, from there heading south was piling markers on the east side where the shallow water ended and the deeper water started. Those markers extended all the way across the mouth of Baffin Bay down toward the lower end of the Lagoon, (before the Intracoastal Canal was
completed in the late 1040s). After completion of the Canal, which resulted in the Laguna Madre not being as salty, the sea worms ate the pilings up and they ceased to exist. Starting where the Laguna Madre meets Baffin Bay there is a large mass of rocks that extends out into Baffin Bay. Most of the rocks are in shallow water one to two feet deep with a lot of separate rocks in the deeper water. Some of the rocks were flat and 20 to 30 feet across and were visible on the extremely low summer or winter low tide. Most of the time all the rocks are underwater. When the Intracoastal
Canal was dug it went right though most of the rocks where the Laguna Madre crosses the mouth of Baffin Bay and it destroyed a lot of the good fishing grounds in that area because the dredge spoil created large spoil dumps on the east side of the Canal and the Canal itself eliminated a lot of the rocks. Most of the big trout and redfish that are caught in Baffin Bay are from around and nearby rocks. Every time the canal is re-dredged because of silt, more
History continued on A5