February 2006

Wardens of the Waves

Offshore game wardens are on the lookout for everything from fish poachers to drug smugglers.

By Chester Moore, Jr.

Sharks, dangerous waves, thunderstorms, drug runners and poachers.

That might seem like the formula for a blockbuster action-adventure movie, but for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game wardens who patrol the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it is all just part of the job.

The image most of the public has of coastal wardens may be of dockside ice chest inspections, license checks on fishing piers and gill net patrols in the bays.

That is, after all, what most anglers see.

As taxing as those duties may be, however, many of these same wardens spend time enforcing laws in the vast Gulf waters off the Texas coast.

And that is an area where anything can happen.

“Much of the general public is not aware of the extent of work that our wardens do patrolling Gulf waters. Texas has a huge coastline, and the work these wardens do is essential in protecting the magnificent resources Gulf waters hold,” says Alfonso Campos, chief of TPWD marine enforcement.

Consider that the Texas coast is 624 miles long with thousands of oil rigs, wrecks and reefs that attract anglers and divers. There are also hundreds of Texas shrimpers and commercial fishermen along with out-of-state and foreign vessels to consider.

The upper coast has around 65 wardens while the lower coast has just over 50. They have to cover the entire coast, both inland and offshore, and about 60 of them rotate duty from bays, marshes and intracoastal areas to Gulf waters.

“That’s a lot of responsibility and makes their job quite challenging, but they do an outstanding job,” says Lance Robinson, TPWD coastal fisheries regional director for the upper coast.

State wardens, federal responsibility

Texas claims nine nautical miles of Gulf waters as state territory, so our wardens naturally have jurisdiction over that. However, beginning in 2001, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) commissioned them to enforce federal laws as well.

That opens their jurisdiction out to 200 miles off the Texas Gulf Coast.

“That’s a lot of water to cover, but our wardens are certainly up for the challenge. We enforce the fisheries regulations as well as those statutes of the water safety act. However, we do not enforce Coast Guard law,” says Major Larry Young, chief warden out of the Corpus Christi office.

“NMFS has very few wardens in Texas, so our agreement states that they provide us with funding for equipment and enforcement and we act as their eyes, ears and, to a great extent, the Texas arm of the law out in federal waters,” Young says.

Much of the enforcement aims at enforcing shrimping laws, which change frequently and are very gear-specific.

“There have been quite a few changes over the years in relation to gear required for shrimping vessels, and now much of our emphasis is on enforcing Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) and Bycatch Reduction Devices (BRDs). Most shrimpers are compliant, but there are those who try to get by without using them,” Young says.

Some shrimpers try to use a language barrier to confuse wardens boarding their vessels.

“That does not work with us. Many of our wardens are bilingual,” Young says.

In fact, more and more of the wardens know Spanish and some speak Vietnamese as well, allowing wardens to get around any tricks that unscrupulous shrimpers might try to lay on them.

While some of the rules such as the requirement of TEDs and BRDs may seem like technicalities, Young says the wardens know the conservation relevance of the rules they enforce.

“We know, for example, the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle is a federally endangered species and that the use of TEDs has helped their numbers,” Young says. “And they know the BRDs are something that could help with numerous fisheries, so as they do their work, they keep this in mind. In fact, it is what drives many of them to work. These wardens are outdoors lovers and conservationists as well as law enforcement officers.”

In recent years, red snapper violations have been the top citation given to recreational anglers in Gulf waters. Red snapper are a prohibited species in federal waters (past nine nautical miles) from Oct. 31 until April 21 annually. The goal is to take pressure off snapper stocks; however, some anglers have tried to skirt the rules by fishing rigs just outside state waters, and then sneaking back and perhaps visiting a rig within state jurisdiction before heading home with their illegal catch during the closed season.

“We had some trouble with that at first, but most anglers are ethical and want to be legal. The others we certainly don’t mind giving a ticket,” Young says.

Corruption on the seas

One of the more pressing problems facing Texas wardens, in particular those working in South Texas, is illegal long lining.

“There are quite a few boats from Mexico that come into our state waters and run long lines. They are targeting pretty much anything but end up catching mainly sharks, but other species as well, and that is something we really have to keep our eyes on,” Young says.

Long lining involves putting out what are essentially long trotlines in the ocean that can go for miles and indiscriminately catch everything from commercial species like king mackerel to sea turtles and valuable sport fish like blue marlin.

“I think any time you have a border situation like that with another country, you are going to have some problems with enforcement, particularly if their laws are quite a bit different than ours,” Young says.

Another problem coastwide, but particularly widespread in South Texas, is drug trafficking. This mainly happens along the Intracoastal Waterway, but also makes its way offshore as smugglers pose as recreational anglers, bringing in drugs from Mexico and South America.

“It can make the warden’s job a bit hairy,” Young says.

Wardens out of the Galveston office faced such a “hairy” situation just before the July 15 opening of the 2005 offshore shrimping season.

“Two of our wardens, Ray Canales and Antoine Jackson, encountered three vessels shrimping in the High Island area after hours just off the coastline. Most of the time when we encounter out-of-season shrimpers, they pull their nets and let us board and realize the party is over. These suspects, however, all fled and in different directions,” says Capt. Eddie Tanuz of the Galveston office.

“The wardens decided to go after the largest of the vessels and coordinate the pursuit with the Coast Guard. The shrimper’s behavior raised suspicion that they were possibly trafficking drugs or involved in a threat to homeland security,” Tanuz says.

The chase lasted for hours in the dark and dangerous Gulf, and by the time they were able to stop the vessel, they were 23 miles offshore and five miles across the Louisiana boundary. Not knowing if those on the shrimping vessel were well-armed drug traffickers or terrorists, the two Texas wardens waited for a Coast Guard vessel from Port Arthur to arrive to assist in boarding it.

“It turns out they were simply illegally shrimping and turned a misdemeanor into a felony,” Tanuz says. “In the end, they harmed themselves and put our wardens as well as the Coast Guard in danger. Our wardens in today’s environment have to be diligent and assume that anyone who acts that way could have more sinister motives than escaping a fine.”

These wardens get help in their dangerous jobs from fast-moving, 24- and 26-foot cutters that allow such chases on the high seas, and they have access to the latest in technology.

Recently, in conjunction with homeland security, wardens have received training with geographic information systems (GIS), for search and rescue after disaster and terrorism incidents.

TPWD uses GIS in conjunction with GPS (global positioning systems) for geographic analysis of various layers of information on a map. A layer is a single category of information. Although maps have many types of information, separation of just the navigable canals from that map, for example, would result in a single layer — ditto for bays, marshes and other types of habitat.

This helps wardens decipher the quickest and most effective routes for response to a disaster and would allow them a strategic advantage in the case of a terrorist attack. Also, it quickly locates assets and liabilities in the case of a disaster. Assets might be hospitals, parks, schools and freeways within a few miles of the incident. Liabilities might be a difficult-to-navigate waterway or a bridge that would block the passage of a large rescue vessel.

All wardens have had to receive some training in homeland security measures since 9/11, and this new technology should aid in search-and-seizure operations offshore and help if, say, terrorists attacked an offshore rig.

“Our Texas game wardens are critical to the emergency management response in this state,” says Col. Pete Flores, TPWD law enforcement director, in a press release debuting the technology.

Hardware involved with the program includes portable PCs equipped with GIS technology that enables communication with a fully equipped GIS lab at TPWD headquarters.

“This technology and training will serve us in our daily duties and will enhance our ability to serve Texans in the manner they expect and deserve.”

Coastal wardens have also benefited from military technology donated by the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA).

Last year, CCA officials donated $16,100 of state-of-the-art image-stabilizing binoculars and military lenses critical for enforcement-related surveillance in both bay and near-shore waters.

Now wardens working offshore can better watch the massive area of the coast they must patrol.

Unseen heroics

To a certain extent, the Gulf of Mexico is still a no-man’s land, a frontier of sorts where civilization is scarce and there are those who seek to plunder the treasures hidden below.

There are no peg-legged pirates with parrots on their shoulder robbing gold from passing ships. But as we have discussed, there are those who steal from law-abiding sportsmen, and it is the offshore wardens who keep them at bay and often go to great lengths, albeit mostly unseen, to keep our waters and their resources safe.

Back when I was in high school, my father and I were fishing offshore out of High Island, cruising the short rigs looking for big speckled trout.

Coming in we saw a boat, which appeared stranded, so we cruised toward it to see if we could offer any help.

It was not a stranded boat, but a couple of TPWD wardens pulling up an illegal gill net. In the net were at least a dozen bull redfish along with some spinner sharks ensnared in the deadly device.

It would have been easy for the wardens to simply pull up the net and not worry about the fish in it. After all, there were some sizeable sharks entangled. Instead, they worked hard to get them out of the net and as we pulled up, they even worked to revive one of them.

Dad and I offered our help but they declined, saying they had the situation under control. I remember telling them it was nice to see them working so hard to save some fish and take that net out of the water.

“It’s all in a day’s work,” the warden said.

All in a day’s work, indeed.

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