If, as Winston Churchill famously noted, “Nothing in life is as exhilarating as being shot at with no effect,” Texas’ speckled trout, redfish, black drum, croaker, striped mullet and all other marine life in the state’s inshore waters should be downright giddy about now. Texas’ saltwater anglers, too.
Over the past three months, winter has fired a steady series of Arctic bullets at the Texas coast. None of them solidly connected, although a couple, including the one that whistled over Texas this past week, came disturbingly close and did leave a few dead and wounded in their wake.
And while this winter almost certainly will fire a couple of other cold shots at Texas, history indicates that if the coast can make it to the end of February without taking a direct hit, the threat is over until next winter’s assault.
Had things been just a little different – had those frozen bullets been a little bigger or ricocheted around a bit – the consequences could have been disastrous for the state’s coastal fisheries, Texas’ almost 800,000 saltwater anglers and the $2 billion in economic impact those anglers annually pump into the state’s economy.
That certainly is the case in North Carolina, where this brutal winter scored a fatal hit on coastal fisheries and left the state’s 1.5 million saltwater anglers as collateral damage.
Freezing temperatures, if they are cold enough and hang around long enough, can, and do, kill coastal fish and other marine organisms. And this winter has been a particularly cold one, with a half-dozen or so truly serious cold fronts reaching the Texas coast, dropping temperatures near the fatal level.
“We got close a couple of times,” said Mark Fisher, science director for Texas Parks and Wildlife department’s coastal fisheries division. “But, so far, we’ve dodged the bullet. If we can make it just a couple of weeks longer, we’re probably safe.”
Texas’ coastal marine species – from finfish such as speckled trout to benthic critters such as marine worms – are physically equipped to survive in a mild, semi-tropical or tropical environment. They are not equipped for extreme cold. When water temperature drops below about 45 degrees, most fish and other marine life found in Texas bays begin having trouble maintaining their metabolism. If water temperature drops to 40 degrees or below and remains there for an extended period, the cold-blooded creature’s internal organs begin failing and they freeze to death. Some fish suffocate when gills cease being able to extract dissolved oxygen from the water.
If the cold is deep enough, long enough, the death toll can be in the millions.
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