The same headline surfaces at least every few months, sometimes mere days apart, but often enough that they've become almost routine: The U.S. Coast Guard has seized yet another load of illegally caught fish, mostly red snapper, a few miles into the Gulf of Mexico. In late September it was 500 pounds, then 900 more two days later. Last week, the haul was an impressive 2,200 pounds. These seizures happen so regularly that a unique coalition of academics and law-enforcement agencies recently stepped up its efforts to convince the Texas public to take IUU fishing, shorthand for "illegal, unreported, and unregulated," more seriously.
An October episode of Beachcombing, a weekly web series produced by Texas A&M-Corpus Christi's Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, invited Coast Guard officers, Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens, and Harte scientists to discuss their joint purpose: explaining the very real, if somewhat underplayed, threat these illicit operations pose to fisheries along the Texas coast.
