The Island Moon Published by Island Moon Publishing, LLC 15201 S. Padre Island Drive Ste. 250 Corpus Christi, TX. 78418 editor@islandmoon.com (361) 949-7700
FREE
Free
The
Island Moon The Island Newspaper
Island Area News ● Events ● Entertainment
January 12, 2012
Photo by By Miles Merwin
The Island where we avoid cliches like the plague
Around The Island
By Dale Rankin editor@islandmoon.com
We are still getting used to this new schedule here at the Word Factory as this is now just our second issue since we became a weekly paper. We get asked a lot if it is more work and the fact is we’re not sure yet. Ask us in a month or two. The paper is hitting the stands each Thursday now and every other week will be thrown to each of the homes on The Island. The issue you now hold in your hands was picked up from a local business since this issue was not delivered. It’s a work in progress but it was time for The Island to have a weekly paper so here we go.
Inside the Moon... Trash Heap of the WEAK page A 3 Thank You To Captain Billy Sandifer Page A 4 Winter Windsurfing Page A 5 Local Music Scene Page A 7
Lawyers guns and money Last time we mentioned that we are looking to put together some bus trips to Progresso, Mexico for fun, shopping, food, and medicine. We were a little surprised at the reaction from readers. We had calls from a bus load of prospective travelers and are keeping a list. But before we take a group down there we’re going to go have a look for ourselves and make sure it’s as safe as advertised. We’re headed down that way this weekend to have a look/ see before we organize a tour. What we have heard is that the Mexican Navy – actually Marines – are in charge in Progresso at the request of the merchants and peace and quiet is the order of the day. We’ll let you know next issue and if we don’t come back by next week please send lawyers, guns, and money. In the meantime if you are interested in being on our watch list call and leave us Around Continued on A6
Next Publication Date: 1/19/2012 Facebook: The Island Moon Newspaper
Updates on Island Projects
Work Begins on Aquarius Extension Dredging of Packery Channel Continues The completion of Aquarius
Street from Commodores on the north to Dasmarinas on the south was first planned in 1973. Work on the project began last week. Crews are on site installing underground utilities in preparation for the 60-foot wide roadbed and complete with median and landscaping. The $1.2 million project was approved by voters in a 2008 bond election and according to the city’s engineering department completion is expected by the end of this summer.
Packery Dredging Dredging continues along Packery Channel with crews now leveling the bottom of the channel on the landward side of the Highway 361 Bridge. City Engineers told the Island Strategic Action Committee in the January meeting that initial soundings of the channel by work crews identified 35,000 to 45,000 cubic yards of sand that needs to be removed from the channel on that side of Highway 361. That means a total of more than 400,000 cubic yards of sand may be removed from the channel during the project and moved by slurry pipeline for renourishment of Michael J. Ellis Beach on the south end of the seawall. However, city officials say the soundings taken of the channel so far indicate there may not be as much excess sand in the channel as originally thought. The dredge project is due to be finished by February 21 and is being paid for with money from the Island Tax Increment Financing Zone which is funded by a value-added tax on new construction within the zone which covers much of the commercially zoned area Aquarius Continued on A 10
Scientific Study Area
A Fight is Brewing Over How Best to Use and Preserve the Laguna Madre Editor’s note: In the past two issues we have been discussing the move by Texas Parks and Wildlife to turn the area of the Laguna Madre surrounding the JFK Causeway into a State Scientific Study Area. The boundaries would include the entire area between the inland side of the The Island to the Flour Bluff shoreline from Pita Island and New Humble Channel in the south to the Naval Air Station on the north. North of the JFK it would stretch across the Laguna from the Air Station to Dead Man’s Hole, then south to Packery Channel, which means it would cover virtually the entire Laguna Madre from the entrance to Nueces Bay south to Kleberg County.
Year 15, Issue 405
There is currently one other such area in the midcoast at Redfish Bay near Rockport. The TPW’s stated reason for establishing the scientific area is to allow state Game Wardens and other officials to write tickets of $500 for any boater who is leaving trails in the seagrass beds with their boat propeller. However, opponents of the move say there is language imbedded in the rules for the Scientific Area which allow for a zone to be added later – a zone inside the zone called a Low Impact Fishing Area – where traffic by motor boats is effectively and specifically banned. Their fear is that the scientific zone is the first step down a slippery slope at the bottom of which motors would be banned from large parts, if not all of the Laguna Madre included in the scientific area. The process for establishing the scientific area is as follows: first a series of scoping meetings to decide what language is to be included in the item put before the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission in its March meeting. Those meetings are now complete and the language is being finalized. If that item is approved by the commission then another set of public hearings will be scheduled to work out specific details of the new law that would then be put into effect. In the last issue we ran a response from the local head of the Wade, Paddle and Pole club which backs the establishment of the Scientific Area in which they specifically said they are not asking for a motor ban at this time – the term for the no-motor areas is a Low Impact Fishing Area (LIFA). They further say they have no plans to ask for a LIFA; the local fishing groups, CCA, SEA, and the Recreational Fishing Alliance, simply don’t believe them. They cite as evidence what they say are previous unsuccessful attempts by the WPP group to Fight Continued on A 6
A little Island history
Loot from a Spanish Galleon is Still Out There in the Sand By Dale Rankin The year was 1853 and the Spaniards had mining gold in Mexico down. Chest after chest filled with gold coins were loaded from the white stone docks at Veracruz into the galleons waiting at the moorings. Gold and silver bars by the hundreds were piled high under the guard of Spanish soldiers. Then it was provisions by the ton to feed a thousand passengers along with crews and soldiers who would be returning home on the ships. Crates of live chickens, rows of overturned turtles with legs akimbo, jugs of wine and boxes of vegetables were on board for the 100 day journey on the floating treasure houses. Each of the treasure ships sailed like an overloaded houseboat carrying enough treasure to send a Dutch or English seadog into permanent retirement. There was little worry of highjacking as it was past the prime years of pirating on the Spanish Main. The return voyage home was a joyous one filled with days of merrymaking before setting sail. The fleet stood out from Veracruz bound for Havana in the summer of that year with twenty ships in the convoy each glittering with fresh paint and presenting a majestic picture as they made their way across the Bay of Campeche and into Havana Harbor where they met with more galleons arriving from Cartigeana. After a few days of celebration the fleet once again set sail for Bermuda with twenty ships with no idea what lay in store for them.
Spain then only after months of uncertainty and fear. A fourth would make its way back to Veracruz with the sad news that the fleet had been caught in a hurricane in the Old Bahama Channel and blown back into the Gulf of Mexico. The ships ended up on a barren stretch of uncharted beach which they called Nuevo Santander that we call Padre Island.
Their treasure was scattered along with the passengers. Three hundred survivors made it to the beach alive and began the long, sad journey down the shifting sands south toward Tampico several hundred miles to the south. Only one of them, Padre Fray Juan Ferrer survived the trip. The rest either starved or fell victim to Karankawa Indians.
In 1554 the Spanish sent a salvage expedition which located the wrecks and did recover some of the treasure, however, for reasons lost to history, no maps were made of the wreck sites and they whereabouts went unknown until 1967 when a group of treasure hunters under the name of Platora Ltd. found one of the sites and began excavating a site just off the breakers six miles north of the Mansfield Cut. Uncertainties in Texas’ antiquities law allowed Platora to work the site for more than a month before the state was able to step in and demand an accounting of the treasure. What was removed before that is unknown but what is known is the list items confiscated by the state. A small, one-ounce gold crucifix of pure gold estimated in 1967 to be worth $100,000, one
Of the twenty ships only three would reach
History Continued on A 6
The Island by the numbers Number of Hotel Rooms and Revenue
Tourism is the driving force for the Coastal Bend’s economy. Here are the numbers for hotel rooms in the area and the revenue they generate. Downtown 1940 rooms generate $28.8 million in annual revenue Port Aransas 3286 rooms generate $52 million in annual revenue. South Padre 3490 rooms generate $71 million in annual revenue. North Padre/Upper Padre Island 1084 rooms generate $16 million in annual revenue.