Roadtrek Travels: Tuesday, March 24 Texas Coast

March 24, 2026

After breakfast and clean-up, we headed back to Sea Center Texas. This facility is an aquarium for some Texas fish, but mainly is a fish hatchery run by Texas Parks and Wildlife, Fisheries division. They raise 25M fish per year! Mainly red snapper, black drum, spotted sea trout and flounder.

We had a tour guide all to ourselves. Tom, who has been here since the inception 20 years ago, was very knowledgeable. They have 36 different ponds, about 4' deep, where the young fish (fry) are placed when they are 3 days old. With all the birds in the area, we were pleased to hear that the young fish never come near the surface, so they don't attract hungry birds!!

Tom took us the tanks where the adult red drum are kept. One female can spawn up to 2 million eggs in 1 night! But of these probably only about 1 in a million will live to adulthood. They can live up to 40 years.

He explained a complex system of lines collecting seawater for the ponds and how they closely monitor water for salinity as well as phytoplankton, which is the main fish food. We saw photos of the phytoplankton and plankton as Tom explained that 75% of our oxygen actually comes from oceans and wetlands. Another reason to preserve and protect these areas!

They are one of three hatcheries on the Texas Coast and operate on a 2.5M budget, most of which is derived from fishing licenses. Greg asked what the biggest challenge is today and he said maintaining the speckled trout population, because of the drought in south Texas, the bays are becoming too salty to sustain the young.

We looked around the aquarium, and then checked out the touch tanks where we touched crabs, sea anemones, etc. One crabs was molting, shedding its old shell, becoming that delicacy "soft shelled crab". They do this 12-15 times a year!

Next up is San Bernard Wildlife Refuge, which I think we'd been to once long ago - I remember seeing bobcats there. We passed some pretty wildflowers along the way and were greeted by some beautiful wild iris.

We first do an Auto Tour around Moccasin and Rail Ponds. Gators, birds, flowers and mosquitoes. Bobcat Woods Trail was a skip, as Beth was mobbed by mosquitoes when getting out of the Trek.

This was proabably the biggest gator we saw, About 12-14'

We continued down the coast. Quite a bit of agriculture going on, with many corn fields with 3-4" tall corn stalks. Quite often there is irrigation equipment in place - all of south Texas is hurting for water. Lots of cattle too, including a few longhorns. And one new addition in the past few years is the plethora of wind turbines! They are hard to see in this picture, but they march across the horizon quite often.

We stop at an HEB grocery store in Bay City. It is almost identical to the one by our house. We will see many of these stores, some really huge, so I guess they've captured the Texas market.

There are a lot of long bridges near the coast, with all the inlets, bays and wetlands.

We cross over Lavaca Bay and stop at the Half Moon Reef Lighthouse in Port Lavaca. A bit of display about Texas lighthouses. There are only 3 remaining, so no Lighthouse Trip in our future here!

Again it is a bit early to camp, so we stop at the Calhoun County Library for a bit. Really nice library with many computers. Greg notices a section featuring China News papers, and another area with Spanish books. There is totem pole also, but we didn't get the story on this. I asked one of the librarians if there was a large Chinese population in the area, but she just said these were donated items.

Next stop is Magnolia Beach, a very popular free camping beach, although the camping is either in a large paved lot, or next to small shaded pavilions with picnic tables. Many snow birds from Canada, Idaho, Minnesota, etc. You are allowed to stay here for up to 14 days for free, and it looks like some take advantage of this. There is a nice, clean, bathhouse and water, but no electric connections.

We are fortunate to find an empty pavilion and make ourselves at home.

Some pretty flowers in the grass bordering the sand.

Nice breeze. We enjoy a walk on the beach and from our site we can watch a group of pelicans "fishing" for dinner. Interesting that several gulls follow them closely, looking for a free dinner. They even sit on the pelicans heads as they scoop for fish. Doesn't benefit the pelicans at all, but they seem to tolerate it.(Google Pelicans and Seagulls Fishing Relationship if you want to know more.)