TGCS HOME PAGE

THIS WEBSITE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

This website will soon be published stand - alone as http://www.tgcs.org

This webpage is temporarily attached to the RFA / TEXAS Website - courtesy of RFA. *

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Welcome to Our Home Page

Texas Gulf Coast Stewards ® (TGCS ®) a non-profit, marine conservation organization, was founded in 2006 for the purpose of the enhancement of saltwater fishing, including restoration of essential fish habitat, along the Texas Gulf Coast.

* Texas Gulf Coast Stewards, which has has filed for status as a Not For Profit Corporation, under I.R.S. Code - Chapter 501(c) 3, was founded by Members of the RFA / TEXAS Board of Directors. Texas Gulf Coast Stewards is not directly affiliated with the Recreational Fishing Alliance, which is a major sponsor of and contributor to the Texas Great Barrier Reef Project. RFA is sponsoring fund raising events and raising public awareness of the need for this project. Texas Gulf Coast Stewards Inc. ®, a separate corporation under I.R.S. Chapter 501 (c) (3) has been formed for the purposes of permit holding, funding facilitation, and insulation of RFA from liability regarding the project. The I.R.S. tax exempt status will allow tax deductible donations to the project from non - industry related entities and individuals.

Our First Project

TGCS has proposed to build what has come to be known as the Texas Great Barrier Reef ® Project (TGBR ®). This will be a multi-year project to place a mile wide corridor of artificial reefs along the entire Texas coast, in state waters approximately 8.5 miles offshore. It is the largest effort ever undertaken to enhance marine habitat for sport fish species.

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Texas Great Barrier Reef Project - Background:

The Texas Great Barrier Reef is a concept that is based upon re-creating the already-working model of successful artificial reef programs from the eastern Gulf and transplanting it here in the western Gulf offshore of Texas. The deployment of 10's of thousands of reefs offshore of Alabama and the Florida panhandle has created one of the world's largest artificial reefing systems. The results of this effort has proven to be astounding for the fish, the fishermen, and the local coastal communities alike.

A local cartographer, Tom Hilton, has been cataloging and mapping the positions of all of the publicly-known structures that man has placed in the Gulf since 2000. He was in a unique position to notice the incredible number of artificial reefs in the eastern Gulf relative to what is available in the western Gulf and wondered why there wasn't more being done offshore of Texas. He also noticed the way the reefs were being marketed over in Alabama; local individuals, companies, and communities were paying for the construction and deployment of these reefs at little or no cost to the local/state governments! This has resulted in a HUGE economic impact to their coastal communities - to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

In January of 2006, Hilton envisioned the potential of duplicating (or surpassing) Alabama's success story by bringing the concept inshore along the entire 350 miles of Texas State Waters. The concept of what was to become known as the Texas Great Barrier Reef was born!

"What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" -- Napoleon Hill

Some of the benefits of this project include:

Creating new breeding and protective habitat needed to increase the overall population of such important Texas sport fish as red snapper, ling, king mackerel, redfish and sea trout and others.

Replacing habitat that is being lost as more oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are being removed.

Providing fishable areas closer to shore, enabling the "mosquito fleet" of Texas fishermen in smaller boats safer access to important sport and game fish previously unavailable to them, effectively bringing the offshore fishery inshore.

Protecting and enhancing the multi-billion dollar coastal tourism and game fishing industry and thousands of related jobs including: hotel/motel, marina, bait camps, boat and motor sales and repair shops, guides, charter boats, restaurants and other fishing, marine, and tourism related businesses.

Restoring the winter offshore fishing season will be a huge benefit of this project. Due to the fact the reef will be in State of Texas waters, regulated by Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept., coastal communities will once again have vital winter tourism along the coast.

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The scope of the project:

The project consists of thousands of reefs in 5 Reef Site Corridors. The reefs will be made from both pre-fabricated designs and fill materials, with approximately 1.6 million cubic yards of construction materials and concrete rubble. The reefs will directly impact about 3,500 acres of bottom of the Gulf of Mexico over the 191,400-acre footprint of the 5 reef site corridors. We intend to deploy a total of 391,113 reef units over the entire reefing corridor. We define a reef unit as an individual unit of fabricated material (approximately 3 cubic yards) or a single unit of approximately 8 cubic yards of other than fabricated materials such as rubble, limestone rock or oyster shells. A reef unit is a subset of a reef on a reef site. There will be thousands of reefs in the reefing corridor made up of a number of fabricated and other than fabricated materials.

The Texas Great Barrier Reef Project will be utilizing donated obsolete bridge and concrete road-bed material, and non-functional preformed concrete structures like broken concrete culverts and other similar materials in addition to the fabricated structures. Scrap materials such as old tires, automobile bodies, and other rubbish, will NOT be utilized in this project. To provide habitat for juvenile fishes and encrusting/boring organisms, oyster shell, limestone rock (approximately one foot or less in diameter) and similar size pieces of clean concrete material (rubble) will be placed on approved sites, often near or around larger fabricated structures Because of the size and shape of these materials, they will be low profile (less than 3 feet), but will usually have more surface area than the fabricated material because of the volume and shape. The exact number of units and reefs deployed in a given area or site will depend on favorable bottom available and type of habitat needed. Low profile rubble and other low profile materials will only be used where the bottom type is appropriate (not on soft or shifting sand bottoms). All reefing material will first be brought to staging areas where it will be inspected by TGBRP researchers (from the Texas A&M Marine Science Center), and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) personnel, to ensure that it meets environmental and TPWD standards before it is deployed. We are working closely with the offshore energy and pipeline industries as well as shipping interests, to insure that the project creates no navigation hazards and has no negative effect on their operations which are so critical to our nation's economy. We will have an Advisory Panel from these and other industries assisting us in this regard.

Project funding

The project will be funded by a combination of public and private grants and endowments, and by corporate sponsorship. The total cost of this project will amount to hundreds of millions of dollars over about a 10 to 20 year period. Although this may seem a staggering amount, the overall long term economic and ecological benefit to the region will far overshadow the initial investment.

For more information please visit our Texas Great Barrier Reef Project Webpage

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TGCS Board of Directors:

Jim Smarr - Chairman
Daniel Bulla
Mikel Stapleton

Texas Great Barrier Reef Project
Project Manager:
Dick B. Stone

Texas Gulf Coast Stewards

P.O. Box 58
Fulton TX 78358
Phone: (361) 463-1558

Contact TGCS via e-mail