Oyster reefs in Texas are disappearing. Fishermen there fear their jobs will too

Johny Jurisich empties a dredge filled with oysters onto his boat.

Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media

There are more than a dozen empty oyster boats with names like Captain Fox floating in the marina on a recent Monday morning at the family dock in Texas City.

On a Monday morning, they would all be out in the bay. Jurisich's family owns the wholesale company US Sea Products and has worked in the oyster business for generations.

At the Oyster Company in San Leon, mariachi music plays in an empty shucking room, the conveyor belts are at a standstill. A full freezer room has a full line of oyster sacks.

25 of the state's 27 harvesting areas are already closed. The season normally runs from November 1 to April 30 but many areas have been closed since December due to the state's desire to be sustainable in the future.

Oyster harvesters and state officials are at odds over how the resource should be managed because of concerns about the industry and livelihoods.

"We're not making any money"

It has taken a big toll on me. This is all I have ever done.

Alex Gutierrez has worked as an oyster fisherman for 35 years and says he usually hires between 10 and 15 people to work with him. He doesn't think he will be able to afford the annual maintenance on his boats because he has been dipping into his savings recently.

He says there is no money to spend on the boats, and you don't want to spend the savings you have.

45% of the nation's oyster industry is produced in the Gulf Coast region. $50 million is an estimate for the industry in Texas.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department uses a traffic-light system to decide when to close areas for harvesting. The agency closes the area if the samples come back with too many small oysters or too few oysters in general.

Johny Jurisich is near an oyster. He puts the larger ones back into the water.

Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media

The industry disagrees with the way the state takes samples and the system itself. They say that by closing some bays, all of the boats are forced into just a few areas, overwhelming the reefs as well.

The data is skewed and it forces too many boats in small areas.

Texas Parks and Wildlife takes samples based on where the harvest happens.

If there is a lot of fishing pressure and an area is being fished quite a bit, then we will go back out and retest that area.

The closings are necessary to give the oysters time to grow again. Oysters prevent shoreline erosion and help filter the water, but unlike fish, they cannot swim away from poor conditions.

The agency has been seeing trends in oyster populations and so it is in line with that.

Texas oysters have had a rough decade, enduring hurricanes, flood events, and the like, according to the Harte Research Institute.

Across the Gulf Coast region about 50-85% of the original oyster reefs have disappeared

Oyster reefs are not able to recover from the things we see happening to them.

According to a report by the Nature Conservancy, 50% of the original oyster reefs have disappeared across the Gulf Coast. They were 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217

In 2008, Hurricane Ike destroyed more than 6,000 acres of oyster habitat in Galveston, according to TPWD.

The oysters in the bay are probably at a lower level because of the disturbances that knock the reefs back.

Climate change is expected to cause a lot of these conditions.

Texas Parks and Wildlife is studying the permanent closing of three bays.

The industry would be pushed closer to the brink if that were to happen.

In Spanish, Ayala says that they are punishing them instead of helping them.

Ayala says he has had to dip into his savings to pay the bills. After 30 years of harvesting oysters, he doesn't know what to do next.

He says that nobody wants to hire an old man.