PBS Show - Caddo Lake State Park & More
[Music] the Texas Parks and Wildlife television series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas thanks to members across the state additional funding provided by the Toyota Tundra your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas Adventure it's what we share [Music] coming up on Texas Parks and Wildlife we're concerned about ecological effects but we're also concerned about economic effects things like erosion and Bank Collapse c lake is a really special place to visit it's a place unlike any other within the state these fish are desperate for Habitat because it means life or death for them [Music] Texas Parks and Wildlife a television series for all [Music] Outdoors being able to see the wildlife to see the fish to see the wild rice dancing with the flow of the current it's just a very amazing [Music] place it's all free diving just snorkeling very unique experience in Clear spring-fed Water like this my name is Nick mchaka I'm owner operator of Atlas environmental and we're contractors with the habitat conservation plan feel very blessed to be part of the project we've been doing it for 10 years out here in the San Marcus River the armored catfish are an aquarium released fish this is one of the rivers in Texas that has been invaded by suckermouth armored catfish they're from South America they're common in the aquarium trade because they eat algae they do well in Aquaria uh but unfortunately that means that they're introduced into ecosystems where humans come in close contact with water and the ecosystems they invade tend to look like Aquaria and so the San Marcus River is is basically a giant aquarium very clear water lots of vegetation lots of algae for these fish to consume I'm Josh Perkin I'm an assistant professor at Texas A&M University we're here for this project to try to understand how many fish are in the river and how we can adapt management of that population to control it to a better extent [Music] there's no natural Predators here for suckermouth armored catfish so they go through um rapid population growth and can start to overcrowd the river they grow fast they spawn young um they reproduce very rapidly they have basically overpopulated to the point of competing our native species they'll burrow up under the bank up underneath the concrete and uh create like an undercut we're concerned about their effects on the erosion that's happening and the bank collapse this population in the San Marcus river is actively being controlled so Atlas environmental and Nick Manaka are using spear fishing to suppress the population you can just hook this around in your hand and then stretch out the rubber band and grip the front of the pulse Spear and whenever you release it it shoots out with the very rapid reload it makes it a very efficient method of [Music] removal it's the the most selective form of fish removal very efficient in terms of removing the armor catfish as well as the tilapia definitely got harder over the years uh they definitely know they're being hunted now we do two tournaments a year the biannual P spear tournaments we do have a free fish fry twice a year which is mainly tilapia but if we have a big enough armored cat fish will serve up those as well we give out about 400 to 1,000 free tacos whenever the tournaments aren't going on we have a year- round Bounty program which is free to participate we have a dive board with a dive flag will'll send you out with and all the authorities recognize that and uh that'll keep you from getting any trouble as long as you're just spearing armored catfish in tilapias 14,000 armored catfish removed since uh 2013 it's definitely a line we'll find out from the data where 508 came from mhm our study is designed to enhance that control can we use really focus control where we spear fish in localized areas or are these fish moving long distances where they might be recolonizing areas where they've been removed I'm going to try and grab a couple of specimens Texas Parks and Wildlife Department funded This research we work with the meadow Center for water and environment at Texas State University those are the divers that do a lot of the underwater work including catching the fish that we put the transmitters in uh and then monitoring and retrieving our sensors that are listening for those tagged fish we use ultrasonic transmitters that emit signals we had some underwater receivers that we pulled up you go sir good job pull data off of them from our fish that have tags in them that track their kind of movement and behavior we have 13, 936 records we actually pulled out a specimen that was tagged we were able to check on the recovery from the surgery that was required from that we still don't know how quickly they grow we don't know how old these fish get in this population so we can learn a lot through a recapture of a specimen like this 74 okay outs side of the range of our stationary receivers we ran the canoe system that had the hydrophone in it to try to narrow down where some of those fish are we have not recorded a fish moving from where we released them in Su up to here we want to know how many fish are in the river where are they spending most of their time and how much are they moving throughout the river so we capture fish we internally plant these transmitters and we follow their movements it's a hydrophone we're listening for a fish with a transmitter in it and what we're finding is the habitats for they're most abundant are the human altered habitats so banks that have been stabilized by concrete that's then eroding and crumbling in those are the places where we see their highest abundances uh but by also looking in places with lower abundances we can uh eventually develop a population size estimate for the entirety of the river to count the number of fish in the river we use a raft so so we call it our lighted immersible fish enumerator or life so our life raft we float know this is looking down at the bottom and then these are just underwat lights uh for at night and then we put a GPS unit in here that tracks our [Music] path it's tough to measure these fish cuz they hide and they're most active at night night and so a big part of our current project is to test for a measurable effect of the spear fishing with data that don't come from the spear Fishers so can we run our raft down the river and see a measurable reduction in the number of fish that are present as we go through the spear fishing tournaments we would like to keep the ecosystem in a state that's as close as possible to its natural state the natural state would be no sucker Mount armored catfish what we're hoping to achieve with this project is an idea of functional eradication the ultimate goal would be just to minimize their impact as much as possible people love the river there's a lot of community involvement in the river kind of community ownership of what they have here it sure makes it easier to work with a water body that others are interested in preserving and conserving I would say um do not release any aquarium species into the river you know very bad for the river and you know also it's not going to necessarily survive cuz we're we're hunting those fish we're really trying to get it restored to its native state where we're not seeing quite as many invasive fish they're definitely still out there but uh we're fighting the fight to keep their populations down and keep the native populations up [Music] [Music] well you know catle Lake State Park that's the only area in Texas that you can find this environment this habitat there's not a lot of people out here to where it's going to be crazy uh you can really get out here and just recharge your soul Catt Lake State Park is the gateway to cat Lake we are located four miles up River on Big Cypress Bayou and cater lake is special because it is the largest naturally formed Lake here in Texas and it was formed around the year 1800 when water from Big Cypress Bayou tried to merge with the Red River but met a giant Log Jam called The Great Raft we are a Civilian Conservation Corp Park July 4th 1934 is when the park officially opened for public use the first thing you see as you drive into the park are iconic pillars that were built back in the 1930s and are still standing today and as you drive through the park you'll see the cabin area those were the cabins that the CCC lived in when they were building this park as well as the Rec Hall which is where they would have had their meals so there's a little bit of magic from the CCC left all over the park there's nothing that's going to be too hardcore as far as the trails go they're they're pretty standard a couple uphill here and there we go so you can come out here with your family and just be out here for a couple hours on the trails and enjoy yourselves Park programs are a really great way to get your kids involved in nature and you just want to tap it on the bottom so nice good one that's cool the kids are getting to really experience it for themselves really get to explore at their own pace and just see what's out there it's called a cricket frog and they'll get bigger than this these are just real little can can I hold one of them yes Critters and mud and all that stuff that is their favorite thing probably ever I want my kids to actually come and physically put their hands into the water to see the creatures up close it's not just something they they know about in their head but something they feel in their heart what you think is it fun yeah I love it here ooh this is my home mhm I hope I catch him cuz he pretty good size oh honey I I just enjoy being here yeah have some metime sure oo I got some oh oh I can fish a little bit mhm when I'm I'm sitting here fishing like this oh come here baby I don't have a care in this world oh I got a goggle ey hey baby daddy oh baby I love [Music] it tling it's nice cuz you don't have the buzz of the motor from a boat so you get hear the movement of the water and you get to kind of feel like you're supposed to be there instead of in a big clunky boat where you're just kind of rocking you get to get really close to the trees and see the detail of the wood and the hanging of the Moss and it's just nice to see the little intricate details of nature [Music] cat lake is a really special place to visit it's a place unlike any other within the state this is pretty cool you really have the opportunity to come out here and really recharge and be a part of [Music] nature here is a mysterious quiet wild getaway that you just don't find anywhere else [Music] [Applause] [Music] woo [Music] [Music] I just never could get away from the water starting back when I was 10 or 12 years old I did a lot of dock work I used to wash my grandfather and my great uncle's boat for 50 cents so I've been through it all you got to want to do it you got to want to be in this business I've been going out there so long it's just part of me now I've been fishing in the Gulf of Mexico since 1962 when we were growing up my cousins and I spent thousands of hours in the Gulf of Mexico it was a place of freedom for us it was a place where we could go where we wanted to go do what we wanted to do we challenged the elements and figured out how to catch the fish I'm a partbook captain there going to be a really big difference from one day to the next when the fish are plentiful the clients really think you know what you're doing okay but when there's no fish they think you're not even trying or anything there's just no fish it's a really tough business to be in the situation for fishing in state waters was just terrible the gulf's bottom is flat mud plane that doesn't provide food or habitat for little fishes we decided we were going to do something about [Music] it certain fish especially the ones that we like to eat use hard structure as their habitat but we've been trolling the seafloor now for many decades and with that comes a disturbance of the seafloor and any hard structure that's brittle can also be destroyed and so all we're left with are soft corals that only get a foot or so high at most if we're left with that option you're not going to have a reef in anyone's lifetime around here if you are it's going to be very small another option is to put hard substrate down on the bottom and build an artificial reef and these have been quite successful throughout the Gulf of Mexico using concrete and steel [Music] RGB reef is located about 13 nautic miles north of the South Padre Island Jetties to create an artificial Reef first you have to gather up material the first material that we put in RGV Reef was The Shrimp Boat and the tug we put down 64,000 uh cinder blocks to make Nursery reef and about another 3,000 tons of other concrete material we have stacked up here 15,000 concrete railroad ties donated by BNSF we're going to drop these like Tangled Pickup Sticks in the reef and we're going to make all those graduated Stepping Stones of habitat that will carry these fish through their life stages these fish are desperate for Habitat because it means life or death for them if you deploy that material it lasts for decades and nobody ever has to cut the grass or pick up the trash we surveyed the RGV Reef before any material was put down and there were very few fish down there and so in terms of fish numbers uh the RGV Reef has been a success there are a lot of red snapper juveniles and most importantly there are post-settlement recruit red snappers showing up right after they settle out of the water column this means for future generations to come there'll be more red snappers showing up on this Reef the thing about building a reef like this is that it's damn difficult where we need money is in the Marine Transport that's the piece that I have been unable to get donated that's the expensive piece that's what's stopping us is the boat that takes the material offshore we got to pay for it I tell you what when they first said we're going to spend $10 million and 10 years building a reef I'm going oh my God these guys are crazy but we're booked up the Bay fishing boats are booked up they're doing it there's 750,000 saltwater Anglers at the State of Texas 44,000 of them live in the real grand valy if there's no fish there's not going to be a fishing industry there's not going to be tourism we use that to sell the reef but what really counts is the next Generation to be able to go offshore and catch a fish if there's more fish my clients are going to have more memories they're going to have more conversation with their friends they're going to send more people to us they'll come back everybody can fish everybody all of us are looking to make the Gulf of Mexico better all of us received tremendous Joy from the Gulf of Mexico when we were younger and had no way to give back that's what pushes us you know I personally think about a little boy or a little girl that's going to go fishing and catch a fish that's what I care about [Music] just like people every park has its own unique identity every place has its own story its own history its culture the nature that's unique to it to the animals that you can find there it's just amazing diversity of Landscapes and places and things to do nestled around the Lone Star State Texas parks are a treasure Trove of natural wonders and captivating Tales but these stories don't tell themselves oh you can see the gold now they need a voice a passionate Advocate who can share their magic with the world that's where Aaron Fry both comes in as a marketing Maven for Texas Parks and Wildlife she's on a mission to inspire people to fall in love with the Great Outdoors what I do is I basically tell people that The Great Outdoors of TX this is amazing and awesome and you should go enjoy it thank you I handle our promotional literature for state parks I do large scale promotional Outreach I do events sometimes with 5 10,000 people my job as a Storyteller is to tell the story of the park so that way people want to come out here and make their own stories I love my job because I get to be close to Nature and I get to work with people who are passionate and care about nature and I get to inspire that passion in others but Aaron's passion for Parks isn't just professional it's personal she has made it her mission to experience the unique story of every single Texas State Park and she has done just that all 89 of them I have spent the last 5 and 1 half years working on visiting every single one of the Texas state parks so that is all 89 it was quite the journey and it was a very fun one at first it started off as just sort of like oh I'll just need to know handful but then I sort of turned into a completionist where I was just like I must check everything So eventually it just became into a personal Quest and I got it all finished in October of last year no one's supposed to have a favorite child no one's supposed to have a favorite at least that's what they tell me my favorite Wildlife one might have guest already rzo bent I love the alligator love all the birding there favorite History Park dinosaur valley cuz dinosaur tracks on the rubber bed how could you not love that my favorite unique experience Park is kaboo Caverns my favorite uh hiking Park cpro Canyon my favorite overnight is gby Lake Brownwood State Park so when people have their own stories they they care and that makes them take care I want people to care about these places I want these places to stay and I want these places to be there in the future for both people and nature [Music] [Music] [Music] that this series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas thanks to members across the state additional funding provided by the Toyota Tundra your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas Adventure it's what we share
2025-02-08 15:53
