CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says it's come up with an estimate on how many fish died along the coast from last month's freeze.
Experts say it should not have a major impact on sport fishing or local restaurants.
"In short we haven't really seen any interruption in local fish," Said Richard Lomax, President of Water Street Restaurants.
Lomax says the freeze and subsequent fish kills has not caused a break in the fish supply chain.
"People that eat in our restaurants like to go fish and there's less reason to come to the coast,” said Lomax. “We could probably sense it that way but as far as supply chain, we're not really sensing it right now."
According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, an estimated 3.8 million fish died during the February winter storm because they couldn't make it to deeper water.
State researchers say the fish kill consisted of at least 61 species like silver perch, hardhead catfish, pinfish, bay anchovy and striped mullet.
Dr. Greg Stunz, the director of the Sport Fish Center at the Harte Research Institute says mainly smaller junk or bait fish were affected.
"A small percentage of those, about 10% was game fish, the others were forage fish and we still do care about those because they supply food supply for the fish that support our economies like trout and redfish,” said Stunz.
Stunz says while fishing enthusiasts need to proactively catch and release, the outlook for the ecosystem's recovery is an optimistic one.
"Mother Nature's resilient. Everything is spawning right now. Many of the fish are contributing back to the population so that's a good thing. But we still should exercise some concern here because we want to do the things that promote recovery as fast as possible,” said Stunz.
This is not the first freeze to occur in Texas coastal waters. Multiple freeze events during the 1980s killed almost 32 million fish, with the most severe impacts being on the lower coast.
Stunz says coastal fisheries will go a long way towards helping recovery in the north and south Laguna Madre. But for restaurants that serve fish, they are not in short supply.
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