Inside the Moon Fun at the Poker Run A2 Remember When A5 Paddle for Parkinson's A7 Fishing A13 Live Music A18 Issue 751 The Island Free The voiceMoon of The Island since 1996 September 6, 2018 Weekly www.islandmoon.com FREE Update on Island Around Projects The Island Mexican Poachers By Dale Rankin First Contract Tropical Storm Gordon decided to Invade Gulf Water on Packery visit Alabama this week. We got a few gypsy rain showers that snuck up from Mexico but mostly it was nice Jetty Repairs calm weekend on our little sandbar. By Dale Rankin Labor Day Weekend kind of came Along Padre Island and went with more of a whimper City staffers told the Island Strategic than a bang. Maybe it was the threat Recent Lancha Boat Interdiction Proves Illegal Fishing From Action Committee on Tuesday that of rain showers or the Back to School the first preliminary design contracts Blues but the beaches and roads, Mexico Is Becoming An Epidemic for repairing damage to the Packery while crowded were not nearly the Jetties by Hurricane Harvey will swarming plasma of humanity and be sent to the Corpus Christi City automobile metal we often see on Council for approval this month. big weekends. Keep in mind that A “small” contract for a preliminary the largest of our local hotels and design of the repairs has been overnight stay condominiums are still executed, with a contract for not back up and running after Harvey design, permitting and construction so our visitors this season have often services to go the council by the been daytrippers who head back OTB end of September. The cost of the when the sun goes down. The streets repairs to more than 1000 feet of of Port A were mostly traffic free on the jetty system, primarily to the Saturday and the biggest crowds on embankments behind the granite the local beaches were actually south works, has been estimated by the of Bob Hall Pier where the locals city staff at $8 million, however that often go to escape the daytrippers. number could change as the design We’ve left the season where what work moves forward. The question happens on The Island leaves on being addressed by the staff and Sunday, we’re going to have to own ISAC members is whether to restore our mistakes from now until Spring Break so be on good behavior Jetty cont. on A4 everybody. Island gamechangers Adopt-A- There was big news on our little Island this week on three fronts. Editor's note: this is the first in a southern Texas coast marks the 57th It is a known fact that state and First the revelation that poachers multi-part series called "Crossing such interdiction by the United States federal agencies patrolling the Gulf Beach Fall from south of the Rio Grande have the Line" which covers illegal fishing Coast Guard since October of 2017. of Mexico have been engaging in been very active in the water off our in the waters off of Padre Island This time authorities seized a total a high seas fish nabbing game with shores of late, and second, Mansfield National Seashore. of 113 red snapper and two sharks Mexican fishermen for several years. Channel is finally going to be dredged Cleanup By Matt Briscoe (pictured above) But with snapper Agencies like the Coast Guard have at a depth that will make it accessible regulations the topic of major seizing dozens of boats and tons of to Island boaters. Corpus Christi, Texas—Sunday’s discussions these days, the real illegally caught fish. September 15 detention of another Mexican But the biggest potential concern for many Gulf of Mexico The nation’s biggest coastal cleanup commercial fishing vessel just off the gamechanger came in the form of fishermen is in the numbers. Poachers cont. on A4 is set for Saturday, September 15th. plans submitted for approval to the The 2018 Texas General Land Office U.S. Corps of Engineers by the newly Adopt-A-Beach Fall Cleanup takes minted owners of the land behind the place at 30 sites coast-wide and Aquarius Extension, known officially Port Mansfield Channel to be volunteers can sign up online at www. as Commodores Cove, and for the TexasAdoptABeach.org or show up area around the Ski Basin, known on-site Saturday morning to take part officially as Cape Summer. For the Dredged to Fourteen Feet in a fun-filled day at the beach that complete drawings see Page A4 in makes a difference. By Dale Rankin this issue. The locations in the Coastal The Port Mansfield Channel will be Water exchange in our canal system Bend are: has always been an issue and is the dredged to a depth of fourteen feet driving force behind the proposed allowing for the passage of ocean- North Padre Island/Padre Balli Park Road 22 Water Exchange going barges and tugs, according Park to a plan released this week by the Bridge. But if the plans as submitted Check-in: Padre Balli Park Office, Willacy County Navigation District. are approved and implemented that 15820 Park Road 22 Contact: problem will be well behind us as Ron Mills, Port Director for the John Vaughn 361-779-0477 john. they would increase the flow outlets Willacy County Navigation District [email protected] Jim from the Gulf side to the Laguna side said the dredging of about 20 million Needham—Surfrider Foundation from the current zero to four. The tons of sand will be done under a james.needham@texasadoptabeach. main inflow from the Gulf would plan funded by the U.S. Army Corps org still be under the Water Exchange of Engineers at a cost of “tens of Padre Island National Seashore Bridge but two new canals would be millions of dollars.” Mills said the cut through at the Commodores Cove deepened channel will stretch about Check-in: Malaquite Visitor site and two new outlets at the Cape 12.5 miles from the offshore sea buoy Center, 20420 Park Rd 22 Contact: Summer site. The water connection on the Gulf of Mexico side of the The last major dredging project in the Mansfield Channel was in William “Buzz” Botts 361-949- through the main canal has always Padre Island National Seashore all 2009. The land at the top of the photo is the southernmost end of 8068 361-949-8069 buzz.botts@ been on the table as part of the plans the way in to the harbor. texasadoptabeach.org for the bridge, but the two passages Padre Island National Seashore, about 70 miles South of at Commodores Cove are new. The Mansfield cont. on A4 Bob Hall Pier. Seashore cont. on A4 same is true for the Cape Summer site where a canal would bisect Sea Pines, A little Island history connecting the existing canal system directly to the canals in the Ski Basin area. This would facilitate boat and The 1916 Storm That Hit The Island water passage from the south end of Editor’s note: This is the latest in a wind turned due east, we knew we the lamp burning on the table and the open, and they were flattened The Island to the Gulf without having series of how the Dunn Ranch came were in for it. I never saw such rolls both doors wide open. We make it to out and bogged down – died from to transit the Intracoastal Waterway. to be on Padre Island. It comes to of water in my life. There were logs in Green Hill, somehow. I don’t know exposure and much as drowning. Make no mistake there is still a lot of us from Dunn heir Greg Smith and those mountains of water that looked how the story started that we tied There wasn’t much of anything left water that has to go under the bridge is contemporary account by an as big as cars, smashing all around ourselves to the trees, but we didn’t. where we had bee. Oh, we found before these plans are implemented, eyewitness to the 1916 hurricane us, they were. The floor wasn’t nailed We just stayed there flat and watched parts of the lamp, and later one of but applying for the corps permits that swept across Padre Island. down and it was about to blow our or all that water and prayed. It was like our saddles washed up on Flour is the first step and it has been be washed out from under us. I told the whole Ocean crashing in. There Bluff. Uncle Pat’s saddle was Yes the 1916 storm was awful but taken. We’ve been on The Island Burton we’d better get out of there was about six-hundred yearlings never found. He had a couple of we didtn’t know it was going to be long enough to take a wait and see and try to make it to Green Hill, the in the lower pasture and seven half bottles of strychnine in his saddle that bad. My cousin Burton Dunn approach, but hey, who ever thought highest point on the Island. Burton broke horses, three mules and Uncle bags and always believing that had come to the lower ranch where we would have a grocery store right?! was ready but we when we looked Pat’s gray horse. Most of them made somebody found his saddle and just we were that day, me and another around at Sisto, (now Sisto was the it through the storm. The cows were kept it, he also hoped they decided We’ve hit the sweet spot of the cowhand, Sisto Del Marez.