N
OTHING SENDS shivers down the spine of fishing guides and savvy Texas saltwater fishing enthusiasts like the words
more than 30 million dead fish according to Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) officials. There was also a less substantial but still impactful freeze kill in 1997. According to former TPWD coastal fisheries director Larry McKinney, Ph.D. Texas has about two million acres of bays and estuaries that are susceptible to freezes. He said of the three freeze events in the 1980s, the 1989 freeze in Brownsville saw the temperature at Brownsville drop to 16 degrees and an estimated 11 million fish were killed. Historically, freezes
“coastal freeze”. It’s not because of the prospect of boating across a chilly bay but the potential devastating impacts of sudden, deep freezes on fish populations. Coastal fisheries populations suffered devastating losses during three freeze events in the 1980s, with combined estimates of
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along the Texas coast have occurred about every 15 years. Small, isolated freeze events occur nearly annually but the most substantial in recent years were in 2010 and 2011. TPWD biologists said the total impacts from the 2011 kill in particular were similar to the freeze of 1997, but the species makeup was drastically different. “During 1997, spotted seatrout, black drum and red drum comprised roughly 75 percent of the impact,” biologists said. “During this year’s freeze, it appears more than 85 percent of the impacted fish are
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