Galveston Day 2

Tuesday, May 10 - We woke up our ocean view this morning, then drove around Galveston to see what there was to see.  We found the harbor and saw some ships, and saw a couple of dolphins.

There is the remains of an old 90 mm gun battery from WWII here, on the northern tip of the island, at Ft. San Jacinto.

We drove past Texas A&M -Galveston, and the cruise ship terminal, but no cruise ships were in at the time.

John came here from time to time during his doctorate work to do research.

We drove back to the RV for a while, then John called so we came back into town and met him at his hotel.  He and co-worker Emily, along with the Texas Gulf Council member Joe, were holding a public hearing tonight on a couple of amendments, so Joe and I sat in on that.  It was very interesting to see John at work, and we could really see what his education had done for him.  It was a very proud moment for us when he was introduced as Dr. John Froeschke!

Joe and I sat quietly throughout the meeting, which only had 3 attendees, but it was interesting to hear the discussions, which mostly were about setting annual catch limits for different species along the Gulf Coast (the handout is entitled "Generic Annual Catch Limit/Accountability Measures Amendment" and John gave a short powerpoint presentation).  After the meeting concluded, we went to dinner with John and Emily and had a very enjoyable evening.  He has two more meetings this week (Corpus Christi and Port Aransas), and we will be right there, but I don't know if we will attend.  They usually involve a lot of griping and yelling, and I can probably do without that -- last night's was pretty mild, probably because there were so few in attendance.

We learned a little more about the seaweed. It's called Sargassum, and is a floating ecosystem to provide home to sea creatures, including mahi mahi, juvenile sea turtles and seabirds.  It breaks off while traveling the Gulf Stream, a natural phenomenon necessary to the life of a Gulf Coast Island.  Cleaning crews maintain sections of the beach by removing trash and debris from this seaweek during the night, then they rake an area behind or in front of the seawall for sunbathing and beach access.  We saw them working when we came back from dinner last night, but they don't seem to clean any of the area down by the state campground where we are camped.
 
Anyhow, today we move on down to Corpus.  We are planning on staying right across Nueces Bay at Portland, which is close to the Omni Hotel where graduation will be held.