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I arrived in Corpus Christi and am staying on Padre Island, the longest barrier island in the world!!!!  This is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited with islands, bays, marshes, lagoons, inlets, and channels, and bright navy blue-aqua colored water everywhere!!!!  There are enormous bridges suspended over the bays connecting everything.  The coastal prairie, dunes, marshes, tidal flats sustain so much life!!  Everywhere you look, unique birds, egrets, herons, ibis, willets, curlews poke about the wetlands, fishing.  There are also tons of humans, and houses, condos, stores, and industry.  

I had the privilege of beach combing with Jace Tunnell, a marine scientist, Director of Community Engagement at the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and founder of the Nurdle Patrol, an organization that tracks primary (pre-production) plastics internationally through citizen science.  The Nurdle Patrol helps to educate people about both primary and secondary plastic pollution, but also the magnificent and varied creatures and plant life that dwell within our oceans and along our coasts.  He has a huge social media following for his work, a youtube video series named “Beachcombing,” a regular segment on NPR as well as a regular column in the local paper, and has been featured in Texas Monthly, the Washington Post, People magazine, and is himself working on articles for other major periodicals.  

As we walked along the beach facing the Gulf Coast, here on North Padre Island, with small bright blue waves lapping at the shore, the sand was patchily covered in what looked like white grass clippings—manatee grass.  Jace said that the grass, when living, is a bright green and is found in Mexico, but as it dies, it ends up here.  There is a seasonality to the organic debris that washes on the shore.  We also saw mangrove pods which may have fallen due to a storm in Mexico and then washed up here.  Among the manatee grass sheddings and strewn about throughout the beach were clumps of amber sargassum (genus of large brown seaweed, a type of algae) with small round bladder-like structures that help keep it afloat.  I recalled seeing some recent episodes of Jace’s Beachcombing where he found massive mats of sargassum filled with a huge assortment of living creatures!  According to NOAA’s Oceanexplorer, “Floating clumps, patches, large rafts, and weedlines of Sargassum can be found in the upper parts of the water column. Sometimes these rafts can stretch for miles across the ocean. This floating habitat can provide food, refuge, and breeding grounds for an array of animals such as fishes, sea turtles, marine birds, crabs, shrimp, and more. Some animals, like the sargassum fish (in the frogfish family), live their whole lives only in this habitat.”

We found many fascinating remnants of life on the beach such as a fragment of a button blue jellyfish which Texas Monthly describes well as “tiny sea creatures that look like a stained-glass sand dollar, with cerulean tentacles attached to a glittering disc.”  There were many small shells scattered about as well as many bits and pieces of brightly colored secondary plastics.  Jace’s segments on social media and youtube often show odd items that wash up on the coast here.  Jace often finds children’s toys, including baby doll heads, rubber ducks, recently found a tv from the 1970s, and a Blues Clues stuffed animal, a captain’s hat, and a refrigerator!  He also finds cool natural items like sea beans, hamburger beans, brain coral, Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle eggs hatched out and many beautiful living creatures such as mud fiddler crabs, man o’ war, oysters, and so much more!  According to Padre Island National Seashore, “Two-thirds of the continental United States, all of eastern Mexico, and a small part of Canada drain into the Gulf of Mexico. As rivers flow hundreds of miles through the watershed, they transport trash. Once here, the trash, now called marine debris, may wash ashore anywhere along the Gulf of Mexico coastline.”  Jace explained that the looping pattern of currents in the Gulf then somehow deposit the tons of trash on the beaches here.

There was also a fragment of a sand dollar, a hardhead catfish with razor-sharp supports for its fins, and a blue crab.  A large wooden plank also floated towards us as a wave came to shore.  A ghost crab peeked out and went back into its hole, then peeked out again, and went back in.  Tiny holes dotted the entire beach.  A sanderling pecked at tiny clams (?) buried deep and scattered all over the shore, forming little lumps like small bubbles just at the wave line.  We came across the body of a spider crab which is pictured in my photo.  Squares of natural tar littered the beach.  A beautiful soft bodied sea whip coral, mustard yellow, long and rope-like, looking convincingly like a shoe string was lying twisted on the shore.  Barnacles were attached to a foam sliver of a boogie board–Jace was hoping we would come across a fire worm as they eat barnacles and he had seen one just recently, but no such luck!

A man from the Texas General Land Office Oil Spill Division came by on his truck to chat with Jace.  There is regular monitoring for oil spills apparently.

Then we climbed the jetty and the most amazing, magical thing happened!!!!  Juvenile green turtles, a dozen or so, were feeding on the algae around the jetty and were bobbing their heads in and out of the water as they came up for air.  We could see the pretty pattern on their shells as the light danced through the water.  Some were very determined and even shimmied between the rocks to munch on the yummy algae.  Jace said that just the day before the water had been even more clear and he had snorkeled with juvenile turtles and taken some amazing photos!  Adult green turtles grow to three or four feet and weigh between 300-350 pounds!  These juveniles were much smaller!

The history of green turtles is sad –over centuries they have been relentlessly hunted for their meat which was considered particularly savory and they were also heavily pursued for their eggs which were also severely overharvested with the turtles themselves even captured in great numbers to retrieve their eggs.   According to NOAA Fisheries, “Historically, green turtles were killed in extraordinarily high numbers for their fat, meat, and eggs. This led to the catastrophic global decline of the species.”  

According to Padre Island National Seashore, “The green sea turtle is the most common sea turtle in Texas and Padre Island National Seashore is particularly important to its survival. The Gulf of America, Laguna Madre, and Mansfield Channel waterways serve as vital developmental habitat for juvenile green sea turtles. Texas beaches are the most important for green sea turtle nesting with about 87% of green sea turtle nests found here. Green sea turtles eat seagrasses and algae that thrive in inshore bays and passes. In harsh winter weather, cold stunned green turtles are frequently found floating alive but unable to swim in the Laguna Madre and other inshore waters and are unable to escape to warmer waters further offshore and south in the Gulf of America. In fact, Padre Island National Seashore staff, volunteers, and our partners in the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network rescued nearly 4,000 green sea turtles in Texas inshore waters during the winter of 2017–2018. Thanks to their diligent efforts most cold stunned turtles were found alive, rehabilitated, and released.”  Jace described a recent winter, 2021, in which green sea turtles were cold-stunned in very high numbers –something like 15,000.  Unfortunately, only 5,000 or so survived in spite of great efforts to save them.  As the climate continues to destabilize, cold-stunning will become a growing problem.  I know some marine animals, as ocean temperatures get warmer, swim farther north during warm summer months, but when temperatures drop can become cold stunned; this has happened to marine animals who’ve ended up off the New Jersey coast, some of whom have been taken in by the Marine Mammal Stranding Center as well as other organizations for other types of marine animals.

Unfortunately, green turtles are endangered or threatened, depending on the population segment.  According to NOAA Fisheries, “…in some areas, green turtles are still hunted for their meat or to supply shells to the wildlife trafficking trade, and egg collection for consumption remains a threat to their recovery. Bycatch in commercial and recreational fishing gear, loss of nesting habitat from coastal development, changing environmental conditions (e.g., sea level rise and warming temperatures), and vessel strikes are the biggest threats facing green turtles.  If you are unfamiliar with bycatch, here’s some explanation:  “A primary threat to sea turtles is their unintended capture in fishing gear which can result in drowning or cause injuries that lead to death or debilitation (for example, swallowing hooks, or flipper entanglement). The term for this unintended capture is bycatch. Sea turtle bycatch is a worldwide problem. The primary types of gear that result in bycatch of green turtles include trawls, gillnets, longlines, hook and line, and pot/traps.”  Some people avoid eating fish because of the abhorrent practices of the commercial fishing industry that leads to the death of many animals that were not even intended to be caught including also in “ghost nets” and other improperly discarded fishing gear.  Many people also don’t realize the serious dangers vessels pose for marine life:  “Various types of watercraft can strike green turtles when they are at or near the surface resulting in injury or death. Vessel strikes are a major threat to green turtles, in particular large juveniles and adults near ports, waterways, and developed coastlines throughout their range.”

Beach morning glories covered the dunes behind us and we searched for some nurdles along the back end of the shore where debris from storms and higher tide collects.  We did find some nurdles quite immediately, but with a bit of effort.  Jace says the beach here is regularly cleaned as many people frequent this beach for recreation –that is why we did not find too many manmade items aside from the thousands of pieces of secondary plastics.  Some of the other beaches Jace frequents do not have cleanups and that is how Jace finds some very odd and unique items as well as some cool natural finds!  And unfortunately, plenty of nurdles!