Perched right on the edge of the Corpus Christi Bay, the Texas State Aquarium stands as a beacon of marine conservation and education.
But its idyllic setting comes with some challenges – particularly during hurricane season, when the aquarium’s resilience is put to the test. At the same time, it’s often called to step in to help the Gulf creatures put at risk.
CEO Jesse Gilbert said the aquarium has an extensive preparation process that it’s honed after experiencing hurricanes Harvey in 2017 and Hanna in 2020.
“Our preparations start about seven to 10 days out to make sure that the facility is in good shape. We also have to make sure that the staff is ready to go and that the animals are safe. So the immediate preparations are making sure we have enough water for the animals, the staff, and enough food for both,” he said.” We’ll have a 30-member rideout team at the aquarium, so making sure that all the supplies are there for that. And then there’s actually a parallel operation that happens at the aquarium, where we start to prepare for what wildlife concerns might happen.”
Hurricanes can have varied impacts on Gulf wildlife, including birds and sea turtles.
“We saw with Hurricane Harvey, when it hit, that there were a lot of impacts to birds. They can’t fight the hurricane-force winds,” he said. “And actually, what you see happen is a lot of oceanic bird species kind of move in; the storm kind of blows them in. And so they’re not used to being over land.
“The other issue can be sea turtles. So this is the time of year where the sea turtle nests in Texas are hatching. And so you’ve got these small turtles trying to make their way in the ocean. And all of a sudden they’re contending with a large storm. And so that can push these hatchlings back onto shore. It can push the local sea turtle population into the jetties. And so you’ll see a lot of trauma and abrasions.”
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Gilbert said Hurricane Beryl’s landfall did not impact the aquarium much but that lessons learned from past storms came in handy a few weeks ago when Tropical Storm Alberto caused massive flooding in the area.
“We saw historic sea level inundation on the North Beach peninsula where the aquarium is. There’s a video of me wading through knee-deep water at some of our exhibits that are on the ground floor,” he said. “And the animals had been moved out and everything was safe, but it really continues to test our preparations. And so lessons learned from Alberto we actually put in place for Beryl.”
However, Gilbert said that having to brace for the first two named storms of the season — with many more to go — isn’t exactly encouraging.
“I was actually talking to a meteorologist last week, during the Beryl coverage, and the last time they’ve seen the Atlantic basin this active was 2005, which is a year that nobody wants to go back to,” he said. “So we have our guard up; our weather systems are active. We have weather meetings every other day just to make sure that we’re aware of what’s going on in the Atlantic basin to make sure we’re ready to go. But yeah, we are certainly on edge going into what appears to be a very active season.”
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