The Galveston County Daily News

Many times during the last four years, I have visited Big Reef on the east end of Galveston Island. Big Reef, bordered on the south by the South Jetty and on the north by Bolivar Roads, is one of my favorite places to visit, because it mixes the sights and sounds of diverse natural habitats with the activities of a busy ship channel.

Sometimes when I visit, I just sit in my car and take in the scene. Sometimes I take a short walk along the jetty. But most of the times I walk the entire 1-mile length of the Bolivar Roads shore of Big Reef.

Many share my feelings for this place, judging from the numerous others I see who come to crab, fish, swim, sunbathe, walk, bird watch and study nature.

One month after Hurricane Ike, I visited Big Reef and noticed some shoreline changes, but the extent of these changes was unclear because of the vast amount of debris left by the storm.

I made several brief visits in the winter during debris cleanup and several brief visits during the summer tourist season. But the debris and tourists are gone, and it is now a full year since Hurricane Ike moved over this shoreline. I decided it was again time to walk the entire 1-mile length of shoreline to see the result.

And recently, I did so. It is no longer the shoreline I remember. Hurricane Ike’s tremendous storm surge moved through here twice. The back flow from the bay might have done most of the damage seen.

At the western end of Big Reef, now there are no beach, no dunes and no beach walkover. Water and waves now reach the South Jetty rocks.

Before Ike, I stood just east of the beach at the edge of a tidal creek and took a photograph of the wetlands. Then, the wetlands of cordgrass, mud, water and oysters were sheltered from the relentless waves of Bolivar Roads by a protective wall of sand and nourished by flood-tide seawater. I still have the photograph dated Dec. 7, 2007. It’s a scene of beauty, an abundance of life.

Now, the remains of those wetlands sit on the edge of the ship channel, where the relentless waves from Bolivar Roads are working to remove what’s left. Hurricane Ike’s storm surge must have ravaged this shoreline, washing away that protective wall of sand and peeling back the shore.

Before Ike, I walked the Big Reef shoreline eastward from the tidal creek all the way to the shore’s end near the Gulf and South Jetty. Then, there was plenty of room to meander outward perhaps a hundred yards or more, and I often did so looking at the lumps and bumps protruding from the sand.

Now, with all that sand gone, the entire Bolivar Roads shore of Big Reef is narrow and battered by wind-generated and ship-driven waves. The ever-present energy of rolling water now is carving away at the edges of Big Reef.

There now are stands of common reed at the water’s edge. This plant typically grows in fresh and brackish marsh areas, which on Big Reef are found in areas inland from the shore where rainfall accumulates. Again, for this plant to be found now directly on the shoreline demonstrates the tremendous amount of ground that has been lost.

On my recent walk, I saw a group of cormorants resting in shallow water near the shore. As the big waves from a passing ship approached, they flew off together to escape the danger but quickly returned after the waves had passed. If only the Big Reef shore could do the same. Unfortunately, she must sit as waves wash her side.

I am certain this shore has been forever changing as sand is removed here and added there. But it seems to me, this time might be a little different, because Hurricane Ike removed so much of Big Reef’s sand that now her shore sits perhaps more vulnerable than ever to the ever present waves of Bolivar Roads that now are eating into her side.

I don’t know how her story will end, whether nature will once again bring back the sand needed for shoreline protection and rebuilding. But for now, the evidence is clear: she is losing.

Steve Alexander, a retired marine scientist, is a Texas Master Naturalist and president of Friends of Galveston Island State Park. He lives with his wife, Pamela, in Bayou Vista.