On the morning of April 26, we woke up early to prepare for our long day ahead. I was excited for the first activity of the day, which was kayaking the bay of Port Aransas. After piling into the vans, we headed out to meet up with our guide, Dean. Upon arrival, Dean quickly hooked up the trailers carrying our kayaks and headed out to the starting point. Once we reached our location, we began to unload all the kayaks for the trip. After looking at all the kayaks available, I picked out a 14ft kayak that had an attached rudder. I choose that one because I had never used a kayak with a rudder before and thought it would be an excellent chance to try one out.
It was a pretty windy day out, so some of the students who had never kayaked before were a little nervous for the trip. The first portion of the trip was quite easy to maneuver in as we were sheltered by a patch of mangroves that were growing in the bay. I was surprised to see the intense amount of wildlife diversity found living in these mangroves. The second stretch of the trip proved to be a much more the difficult challenge. To reach our final destination we had to paddle across the bay, which consisted mostly of open water. The wind was blowing toward shore forcing us to paddle straight into the waves. Scattered throughout the bay, however, were small islands of mangroves that we could use as shelter to escape the wind and waves.
I am not sure how long exactly it took for our group to cross the bay, but it did not seem to take very long. Once we arrived at our destination, which was an island in the middle of the bay, our group quickly exited their kayaks and began to explore the area. The island provided an excellent view of the bay and showed just how large it actually was (Picture 1).
We spent the next few hours on the island seining for fish and learning about the surrounding ecosystem. It was really interesting to hear how the ocean ecosystems function and the issues that they are currently facing. The journey back to shore was easy, as the wind had died down and we were able to paddle with the current. Back on shore, we loaded the kayaks onto the trailer and said goodbye to Dean.
Our next stop of the day was to grab some lunch by the ocean. We set up next to a channel that looked promising for catching fish. Several of the student began to throw cut bait out into the water in hopes of reeling in a fish. Sadly, only one decent sized fish was caught over the course of several hours. While fishing was not going so well, we did get to see several others forms of wildlife, including great blue herons hunting for prey (Picture 2) and a pod of dolphins swimming by (Picture 3). To help teach us more about saltwater fish, Casey recommended we seine the shore to see what we could pull out of the water. It was awesome to see the fish that were found here as some of them had very unique appearances, such as the pipefish (Picture 4).
After spending the afternoon fishing and seining, the group decided to head back to our campsite to relax for a bit. This rest didn’t last long, as many of the students wanted to fish in the ocean some more. Several students headed back down to the ocean to throw their lines in. A group of us, however, decided to go explore the town. We visited several novelty shops that were very cool but quite expensive. After a few hours, we decided to head back and go swimming in the ocean. Later that night, we began to explore the beach for critters, as the low tide would cause several organisms to wash up on shore. We found multiple new animals that I had never seen before. Some of the animals we saw were crabs, jellyfish, stingrays, sea cucumbers, and even a starfish (Picture 5).
We spent several days in Texas, but this day stood out to me because of all the interesting activities that we did and all the cool organisms that I saw. This trip was an awesome adventure and one that I will never forget.