FlatsWorthy Takes a Stand on Boating Courtesy and Oyster Reef Conservation

Chatter among angling circles throughout South Texas and beyond often evolves into angry rants condemning boating misbehavior on shallow bays.

Topics range from burning shorelines and using seagrass flats as shortcuts to the more egregious practice of vessels creating artificial channels to access back lakes on barrier islands and mainland marshes. While most coastal anglers are all-too familiar with such childish and inconsiderate behavior on bays and at boat ramps, their growing outrage and finger pointing hasn’t resulted in positive action. That is until renowned Rockport fly-guide Capt. Chuck Naiser had seen enough.

It helped that he had the historical perspective that comes from plying his home waters for nearly half a century. And along the way, Naiser garnered much respect from the angling community.

Naiser established the FlatsWorthy (Diverse Anglers Mutual Respect - FlatsWorthy Inc.) movement in 2015, by sharing with a group of mid-coast anglers, his ambitious goal of returning civility to the remote flats of the Texas coast. The original premise involved courtesy and etiquette among all bay users. Naiser’s core founders were guides, kayakers, airboaters, fly anglers, wade anglers, along with those who drift-fish or enjoy poling the flats. He labeled this group as diverse anglers with mutual respect, committed to promoting fishing as a sustainable relaxing escape, rather than a contentious battle among angling factions.

While most anglers openly applauded FlatsWorthy’s mission from the start, others bristled in their belief that the movement would lead to restrictions on certain boating activities. Pushback from naysayers mostly came from airboat operators who took to social media to denounce FlatsWorthy’s motives and to vilify Naiser. But FlatsWorthy prevailed.

From the beginning, Naiser insisted that the etiquette issues could be resolved by education, not the creation of new laws. Years earlier, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department had established a statute that prohibited the uprooting of seagrass with an outboard prop within 32,000 acres of shallow grass-flats from Rockport to Port Aransas. Of course, FlatsWorthy fully embraces this measure.

Fast forward to 2017, when Naiser began studying how the dozens of oyster boats were strip-mining this valuable resource. So, Naiser began talking to TPWD officials about how they determined the opening and closing of the commercial oyster harvest. For decades the department regulated the harvest based on the size and abundance of oysters on certain reefs on a regional basis. In response, Naiser introduced a revolutionary concept that highlighted the essential role that reef structures played on water movement, erosion abatement, and other important benefits they contribute to a healthy ecosystem. More on this later.

Meanwhile, FlatsWorthy’s growth and popularity was slow but steady for the first two years. Then came Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, which dramatically demonstrated how vulnerable the region’s sensitive coastal habitats are, especially where man’s destructive behavior had further degraded the resource by fragmenting the natural habitat. It didn’t help that prior to Harvey, area bay systems, including San Jose Island, experienced a prolonged and unprecedented period of high water, with levels of 1-2 feet above normal. The cause of this anomaly is unclear, but it’s important to note that the inundation killed swaths of certain grasses that could not tolerate prolonged submersion. The resulting conditions did not allow other plants to replace the vegetation that was lost.

Suffice to say the Category 4 storm put FlatsWorthy on pause, while Rockport and surrounding communities shifted into survival/recovery mode. However, during this time, many doors opened, allowing FlatsWorthy to forge relationships with agencies and institutions, such as the University of Texas Marine Science Institute (UTMSI) in Port Aransas, the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program (CBBEP), Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR), Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI), Goose Island State Park (GISP), and Texas Sea Grant. These relationships expanded FlatsWorthy’s reach and influence, boosted its brand, enhanced its profile, and raised its credibility, while providing access to countless scientists and volumes of research materials.

Harvey’s destructive forces changed the landscape and hydrology of the barrier islands, seagrass meadows, and oyster reefs, along with vast stretches of black mangroves. Naiser also used this period to become a student of the region’s oyster-reef dynamics, as well as the destructive methods of commercial oyster harvesting. He took a closer look at how the state determined the opening and closing of oyster seasons, solely based on the size and abundance of oysters.

Naiser continued to drill down on the essential role of oyster reefs, specifically within the shallow Mesquite Bay complex. He examined old charts and Google Earth images to compare the current dynamics at the time to the historic characteristics of a mechanism he refers to as baffle reefs. He noted that the repeated scraping of these reefs by oyster boats had undermined the ecological benefits of these reefs by chiseling away decades of growth. He brought this message to biologists at TPWD, insisting that this series of reefs provides much more than fisheries habitat. He asserted that the reefs also serve as baffles that stabilize the bay bottom, while moderating and channeling the flow of water between San Antonio Bay to the north and Aransas Bay to the south. Slowing the current allows oysters not only to thrive, but also to filter microbes and impurities from the water. Without the baffle reefs, prevailing winds from San Antonio and Espiritu Santo bays would push water through this shallow area more rapidly, resulting in erosion and turbidity, while reducing the viability of the living oysters. The wave attenuation benefits alone improve water quality, while allowing the oysters to function as nature intended.

To Naiser’s surprise, Robin Riechers, the department’s director of Coastal Fisheries, accepted this premise and went on to support Naiser’s suggestion that the only solution would be to declare more than 75,000 acres of oyster reefs as a sanctuary, free from commercial harvest. As a stop-gap measure, the department shut down the oyster season in the Mesquite Bay complex almost immediately. Perhaps nearly as significant as Riecher’s endorsement was partnering with CCA-Texas on this issue. On Nov. 3, 2022, CCA chartered a bus to TPWD headquarters in Austin to convince the TPWD Commission to establish the state’s first sanctuary reefs. When the busload of CCA and FlatsWorthy faithful arrived, they were met by eight charter buses filled with protesters representing the Texas oyster industry.

The measure passed unanimously.

Over time, it was natural that FlatsWorthy develop a much stronger conservation element aimed at reducing human impacts on coastal resources, such as aquatic vegetation and oyster reefs. But Naiser points out that many of the boating behaviors he’s trying to curb, go hand in hand with FlatsWorthy’s overall goal to conserve and protect anything that contributes to a healthy fishery and ecosystem. This, in turn, enhances our enjoyment of this sensitive resource.

“While we’ve evolved substantially since the beginning,” Naiser said. “We’re still about leaving the resource better than we found it, for future generations to enjoy. By God, someday they’ll look back on what we did and thank us for taking a stand.”