Morgan Gentzkow
Excitement on the island
My favorite part of the Texas Aquatic Field Ecology trip was being at Port O’Connor. The group was here for approximately two days. We began our time at Port O’Connor with getting supplies at Walmart and Academy Sporting Goods. Next, we headed off to meet up with Cooper Knight, who would be taking us to the island of Matagorda for camping, fishing, and seining. We met Cooper at his boat dock. Here he explained to us all the dangers and things that we may come across while camping out on the island. We then unpacked all our supplies that we would be taking with us to the island, and Cooper began shuttling people and supplies out to the island. The island was approximately seven miles from the coast of Texas and took about thirty minutes for us to get out to it.
We made it out to the island and Dillon and Spencer were trying to grab the dock and tie the boat to it so we could unload, and they failed. The boat began to float away from the dock and Dillon kept hanging on while Spencer stood by him and the rest of us just watched. Dillon is tall but not quite tall enough and ended up going into the water. All of us just sat and laughed. This ended up being one of the many highlights of this year’s trip.
The next couple of hours consisted of setting up camp, preparing supper, and fishing. We each set up our tent in close proximity of each other, making sure to keep our food outside so that the racoons and pigs wouldn’t try to get into our tents. We then started preparing food, which consisted of fresh shrimp, potatoes, corn, and sausage. This probably ended up being one of the best meals of the trip, especially considering that some of us got food poisoning two days later and didn’t eat much, if not anything the rest of the trip. Once we got the food cooking some of us went fishing, and some of us were messing around with a cast net. I was one of the ones who used the cast net. I was not very good at throwing it, but that night I caught a smaller crab and a shell in it
(Figure 1). We also got to witness a beautiful sea side sunset, as pictured (Figure 2).
Once we finally settled down for the night and took to our tents it was around midnight. Some of us were really nervous about having rattle snakes come curl up under our tent for warmth, or raccoons, pigs, coyotes, or alligators coming and messing with our tents. I was one of these and thought that I would not be able to sleep but I was tired enough and did. However, I woke up around 3 a. m. and heard something walking around and saw some shadows. I laid completely still thinking that it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Eventually the noise and shadows disappeared, and I fell back to sleep after a while.
The next day was a busy one. We started it off by eating breakfast and fishing or a few of us using the cast net again. This time when using the net, I actually caught a fish, a flounder to be
exact (Figure 3). Mid-morning half us went with Cooper on a boat tour. While on the tour, my group saw a variety of birds, including two whooping cranes, dolphins, an oyster reef, and the Gulf of Mexico. The whooping cranes even did a little dance for us
(Figure 4). The dolphins on the other hand, were a little more difficult to get a picture of, but I tried (Figure 5). We stopped on the Gulf for awhile and walked in the
water and looked for sea shells and sand dollars. I grabbed quite a few. It warmed up really fast this day and by this point in the day all of us white northern folks were turning red. After the other half of our group did their tour, we seined some spots in the salt water by the island. Dusty McDonald came with us to do this and help us with identifying all of the salt water fish that we were not familiar with. After this we began to pack up and haul all our stuff back to the mainland. We returned tired, hungry, burnt, and thirsty, so we decided to go find a place to eat. After eating we set up camp in the front lawn of Cooper’s rental place and all took turns showering in the small and freezing cold showers. It was still refreshing though since most of us hadn’t showered for a few days.
The next morning consisted of packing everything up again, reorganizing the trailer, and talking with Cooper. This ended our time in Port O’Connor.