The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Artificial Reefs Program (ARP) provides artificial substrates that support marine habitats which will develop into a complex reef community. When artificial reefs are initially created, they provide an important structure where encrusting invertebrate species can secure themselves. These organisms are the beginnings of an interactive food web that supports a host of reef fish species. By providing food and shelter, artificial reefs can enhance overfished populations of resident reef fish like snapper and grouper. Transient species like mackerel, shark and billfish can also benefit by feeding on the resident fish. People also benefit by enhancing fishery resources, as well as fishing and diving opportunities off the Texas Coast. The types of artificial reefs involved are broken into three programs: Rigs-to-Reefs, Near Shore (/Shallow) Reefs, and Ships-to-Reefs. Numerous anglers and divers travel offshore each year, visiting sites managed by TPWD which are supported by these programs. The goal of the TPWD Artificial Reefs Programs is to continue promoting, developing, maintaining, monitoring and enhancing the artificial reef potential in Texas offshore waters.The objective of this viewer is to support these goals by:Creating a method for users to query locations of TPWD artificial reefs, and distances between points of interest Provide users with access to aggregate information on TPWD artificial reefs Provide users with an interactive, user-friendly web application to act as a reliable resource for information For more information, please email the Artificial Reef Program at: ArtificialReefs@tpwd.texas.gov

The Texas Paddling Trail Finder is an interactive mapping tool that allows users to search for a paddling trail by waterbody or by straight-line distance from a certain city or town.

Oyster harvest and trade are managed jointly by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Department of Health under guidelines from the National Shellfish Sanitation Program and the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference. Oyster shipping and processing is regulated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Texas Department of Health, and the National Shellfish Sanitation Program. Historically, the Texas Legislature has managed the State's oyster fishery. However, since 1985, a trend of increasing authority being delegated to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for adjusting the season and enforcing laws has been evident. Under House Bill 1300, the Texas Legislature has directed the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission to develop rules that would allow the commercial production of oysters within in Texas coastal waters. The purpose of the Cultivated Oysters Mariculture (COM) Sites Project is to allow the public, potential applicants and department staff the ability to review proposed and permitted sites within Texas bays and estuaries that are to be used for off-bottom commercial oyster mariculture. Providing a visual reference of each proposed site will provide guidance to potential applicants to ensure their proposed site does not overlap or otherwise conflict with an existing permitted area or another proposed site. Additionally, this information will allow interested members of the public to provide comments to the department regarding the proposed project and specific location that will be used in reviewing the application. The map viewer will be in the form of a story Map reflecting permitted and pending sites as well as an interactive tab. Multiple ArcGIS Online web maps and hosted feature layers have been used to create the final product.

Reason for SelectionHardbottom provides an anchor for important seafloor habitats such as deep-sea corals, plants, and sponges. Hardbottom is also sometimes associated with chemosynthetic communities that form around cold seeps or hydrothermal vents. In these unique ecosystems, micro-organisms that convert chemicals into energy form the base of complex food webs (Love et al. 2013). Hardbottom and associated species provide important habitat structure for many fish and invertebrates (NOAA 2018). Hardbottom areas serve as fish nursery, spawning, and foraging grounds, supporting commercially valuable fisheries like snapper and grouper (NCDEQ 2016).According to Dunn and Halpin (2009), “hardbottom habitats support high levels of biodiversity and are frequently used as a surrogate for it in marine spatial planning.” Artificial reefs arealso known to provide additional habitat that is quickly colonized to provide a suite of ecosystem services commonly associated with naturally occurring hardbottom (Wu et al. 2019). We did not include active oil and gas structures as human-created hardbottom. Although they provide habitat, because of their temporary nature, risk of contamination, and contributions to climate change, they do not have the same level of conservation value as other artificial structures.Input DataSoutheast Blueprint 2024 extentSoutheast Blueprint 2024 subregionsCoral & hardbottomusSEABED Gulf of America sediments, accessed 12-14-2023; download the data; view and read more about the data on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Gulf of Mexico Atlas (select Physical --> Marine geology --> 1. Dominant bottom types and habitats)Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Gulf of America, seismic water bottom anomalies, accessed 12-20-2023The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC)South Atlantic Bight Marine Assessment(SABMA); chapter 3 ofthe final reportprovides more detail on the seafloor habitats analysisNOAA deep-sea coral and sponge locations, accessed 12-20-2023 on theNOAA Deep-Sea Coral & Sponge Map PortalFlorida coral and hardbottom habitats, accessed 12-19-2023Shipwrecks & artificial reefsNOAA wrecks and obstructions layer, accessed 12-12-2023 on theMarine CadastreLouisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Artificial Reefs: Inshore Artificial Reefs, Nearshore Artificial Reefs, Offshore and Deepwater Artificial Reefs (Google Earth/KML files), accessed 12-19-2023Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) Artificial Reefs, accessed 12-19-2023; download the data fromThe Artificial Reefs Interactive Mapping Application(direct download from interactive mapping application)Mississippi Department of Marine Resources (MDMR) Artificial Reef Bureau: Inshore Reefs, Offshore Reefs, Rigs to Reef (lat/long coordinates), accessed 12-19-2023Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR) Artificial Reefs: Master Alabama Public Reefs v2023 (.xls), accessed 12-19-2023Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC):Artificial Reefs in Florida(.xlsx), accessed 12-19-2023Defining inland extent & split with AtlanticMarine Ecoregions Level III from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation North American Environmental Atlas, accessed 12-8-20212023NOAA coastal relief model: volumes 2 (Southeast Atlantic), 3 (Florida and East Gulf of America), 4 (Central Gulf of America), and 5 (Western Gulf of America), accessed 3-27-2024National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)Characterizing Spatial Distributions of Deep-sea Corals and Hardbottom Habitats in the U.S. Southeast Atlantic;read the final report; data shared prior to official release on 2-4-2022 by Matt Poti with the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) (matthew.poti@noaa.gov)Predictive Modeling and Mapping of Hardbottom Seafloor Habitats off the Southeast U.S: unpublished NOAA data anddraft final report entitled Assessment of Benthic Habitats for Fisheries Managementprovided on 1-28-2021 by Matt Poti with NOAA NCCOS (matthew.poti@noaa.gov)Mapping StepsNote: Most of the mapping steps were accomplished using the graphical modeler in QGIS 3.34. Individual models were created to combine data sources and assign ranked values. These models were combined in a single model to assemble all the data sources and create a summary raster.Create a seamless vector layer to constrain the extent of the Atlantic coral and hardbottom indicator to marine and estuarine areas <1 m in elevation. This defines how far inland it extends.Merge together all coastal relief model rasters (.nc format) using the create virtual raster tool in QGIS.Save the merged raster to .tif format and import it into ArcPro.Reclassify the NOAA coastal relief model data to assign a value of 1 to areas from deep marine to 1 m elevation. Assign all other areas (land) a value of 0.Convert the raster produced above to vector using the raster to polygon tool.Clip to the 2024 Blueprint subregions using the pairwise clip tool.Hand-edit to remove terrestrial polygons (one large terrestrial polygon and the Delmarva peninsula).Dissolve the resulting data layer to produce a seamless polygon defining marine and estuarine areas <1 m in elevation.Hand-edit to select all but the main marine polygon and delete.Define the extent of the Gulf version of this indicator to separate it from the Atlantic. This split reflects the extent of the different datasets available to represent coral and hardbottom habitat in the Atlantic and Gulf, rather than a meaningful ecological transition.Use the select tool to select the Florida Keys class from the Level III marine ecoregions (“NAME_L3 = "Florida Keys"“).Buffer the “Florida Keys” Level III marine ecoregion by 2 km to extend it far enough inland to intersect the inland edge of the <1 m elevation layer.Reclassify the two NOAA Atlantic hardbottom suitability datasets to give all non-NoData pixels a value of 0. Combine the reclassified hardbottom suitability datasets to define the total extent of these data. Convert the raster extent to vector and dissolve to create a polygon representing the extent of both NOAA hardbottom datasets.Union the buffered ecoregion with the combined NOAA extent polygon created above. Add a field and use it to dissolve the unioned polygons into one polygon. This leaves some holes inside the polygon, so use the eliminate polygon part tool to fill in those holes, then convert the polygon to a line.Hand-edit to extract the resulting line between the Gulf and Atlantic.Hand-edit to use this line to split the <1 m elevation layer created earlier in the mapping steps to create the separation between the Gulf and Atlantic extent.From the BOEM seismic water bottom anomaly data, extract the following shapefiles: anomaly_confirmed_relic_patchreefs.shp, anomaly_Cretaceous.shp, anomaly_relic_patchreefs.shp, seep_anomaly_confirmed_buried_carbonate.shp, seep_anomaly_confirmed_carbonate.shp, seep_anomaly_confirmed_organisms.shp, seep_anomaly_positives.shp, seep_anomaly_positives_confirmed_gas.shp, seep_anomaly_positives_confirmed_oil.shp, seep_anomaly_positives_possible_oil.shp, seep_anomaly_confirmed_corals.shp, seep_anomaly_confirmed_hydrate.shp.To create a class of confirmed BOEM features, merge anomaly_confirmed_relic_patchreefs.shp, seep_anomaly_confirmed_organisms.shp, seep_anomaly_confirmed_corals.shp, and seep_anomaly_confirmed_hydrate.shp and assign a value of 6.To create a class of predicted BOEM features, merge the remaining extracted shapefiles and assign a value of 3.From usSEABED sediments data, use the field “gom_domnc” to extract polygons: rock (dominant and subdominant) receives a value of 2 and gravel (dominant and subdominant) receives a value of 1.From the wrecks database, extract locations having “high” and “medium” confidence (positionQuality = “high” and positionQuality = “medium”). Buffer these locations by 150 m and assign a value of 4. The buffer distance used here, and later for coral locations, follows guidance from the Army Corps of Engineers for setbacks around artificial reefs and fish havens (Riley et al. 2021).Merge artificial reef point locations from FL, AL, MS and TX. Buffer these locations by 150 m. Merge this file with the three LA artificial reef polygons and assign a value of 5.From the NOAA deep-sea coral and sponge point locations, select all points. Buffer the point locations by 150 m and assign a value of 7.From the FWC coral and hardbottom dataset polygon locations, fix geometries, reproject to EPSG=5070, then assign coral reefs a value of 7, hardbottom a value of 6, hardbottom with seagrass a value of 6, and probable hardbottom a value of 3. Hand-edit to remove an erroneous hardbottom polygon off of Matagorda Island, TX, resulting from a mistake by Sheridan and Caldwell (2002) when they digitized a DOI sediment map. This error is documented on page 6 of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s5-Year Review of the Final Generic Amendment Number 3.From the TNC SABMA data, fix geometries and reproject to EPSG=5070, then select all polygons with TEXT_DESC = "01. mapped hard bottom area" and assign a value of 6.Union all of the above vector datasets together—except the vector for class 6 that combines the SABMA and FL data—and assign final indicator values. Class 6 had to be handled separately due to some unexpected GIS processing issues. For overlapping polygons, this value will represent the maximum value at a given location.Clip the unioned polygon dataset to the buffered marine subregions.Convert both the unioned polygon dataset and the separate vector layer for class 6 using GDAL “rasterize”.Fill NoData cells in both rasters with zeroes and, using Extract by Mask, mask the resulting raster with the Gulf indicator extent. Adding zero values helps users better understand the extent of this indicator and to make this indicator layer perform better in online tools.Use the raster calculator to evaluate the maximum value among

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's (TPWD) Artificial Reef Sites

Data Supporting the development of the Artificial Reefs Interactive Mapping Application

A. Reef Site Name - common name of the reef site used within the TPWD Artificial Reef Program

B. OCS Region - the federal Outer Continental Shelf region used by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for oil and gas lease management

C. Reef Structures - high level description of the materials in individual reef sites

D. USACOE Permit - a USA Army Corps of Engineers permit must be help by TPWD for any and all construction and deployment actions.

E. USACOE Permit Approval - the original approval date of the USACOE permit

F. USACOE Permit Expiration - most USACOE permits expire within 2 years. If the permit is expired at a reef site, it will not impact angler or diver use. However, oil and gas operators or public reefing project managers will need to work with TPWD to ensure the permit is renewed before deployment operations.

G. TX GLO Surface Lease - reef sites within the 9 nautical mile region of the coast of Texas require an additional permit from the Texas General Land Office

H. TX GLO SL Approval - the original approval date of the TX GLO surface lease

I. TX GLO SL Expiration - the expiration date of the TX GLO surface lease. Most surface leases are good for at least 10 year, if not longer. As with the USACOE permit, should a deployment operation wish to take place at a reef site with an expired surface lease the project manager will need to work with TPWD to ensure the permit is renewed before operations occur.

J. Reef Site Dimension (ft) - the length of each side of the reef site in feet. In two cases, the dimension is the diameter of the reef site.

K. Reef Size (acres) - the surface area PERMITTED. This is not the footprint of the material in the reef site, but the permitted boundary of the individual reef site.

L. Water Depth (ft) - estimated water depth in feet at each reef site

M. Profile of Material (ft) - profile or height of deployed material, in feet

N. Distance from Nearest Port (NM) - estimated distance, in nautical miles, from the closest port to the reef site

O. Nearest Port - nearest port to the reef site

P. TX State Waters - Yes or No - if a reef site is located within the 9 nautical miles of the Texas state coast, there will be a Y in the column

Q. USCG Clearance Required (ft) - required clearance, in feet, over the deployed reef material, as determined by the US Coast Guard

R. PATON Buoy - Private Aids to Navigation (PATON) include lighted structures, beacons, and buoys. If the USCG requires a PATON buoy, this column will be marked as Permanent or Temporary.

S. PATON Buoy Type - if the PATON buoy requires a light, it will be mentioned here

T. PATON Buoy Number - this is the identification number registered with the USCG for each of the PATON buoys

U. PATON Buoy Established - this date is the date on file with both the USCG and TPWD for the agreement to establish a private aid for navigation

V. Longitude WGS84 - longitude of the center point of the individual reef site, provided in decimal degrees and UWGS84 Web Mercator

W. Latitude WGS84- latitude of the center point of the individual reef site, provided in decimal degrees and UWGS84 Web Mercator

For more information, please email the Artificial Reef Program at: ArtificialReefs@tpwd.texas.gov