Diving Against Debris in Port Aransas Texas
Alamo IDC conducted a Dive Against Debris on Saturday, April 23rd after the Texas wide Adopt A Beach cleanup. We collected trash on both sides of the Horace Caldwell Pier in Port Aransas Texas. We found many fishing hooks and lines around the pillars of the pier. We expected to find more trash than what we found. We were extremely disturbed at finding five butchered shark heads and one whole infant hammerhead shark under the pier as well. This was the ugly evidence of shark slaughter by fishermen. In the parking lot, we saw two SUVs with window decals of sharks on hooks. These people must have been shark hunters. We plan to contact city officials to convince them to allow only catch and release of sharks caught on the pier or in the waters near the pier.
We were also interviewed by Channel 4 news from San Antonio for their News4Nature series. They have many episodes of trash in the watersheds and waterways but now they have footage of the trash that has made the ugly journey from watersheds to the ocean. We will be posting this video soon.