Padre Island National Seashore (PINS) is a national seashore located on Padre Island off the coast of South Texas. In contrast to

South Padre Island South Padre Island is a barrier island in the U.S. state of Texas. The remote landform is located in Cameron County, Willacy County, and accessible by the Queen Isabella Causeway. South Padre Island was formed when the creation of the Port Man ...

, known for its beaches and vacationing college students, PINS is located on North Padre Island and consists of a long beach where nature is preserved. Most of the park is primitive, but camping is available, and most of the beach is only accessible to four-wheel-drive vehicles. All but four miles is open to vehicle traffic. PAIS is the fourth designated national seashore in the United States.David Sikes of ''

Corpus Christi Caller-Times The ''Corpus Christi Caller-Times'' is the newspaper of record for Corpus Christi, Texas. History There has been a newspaper in Corpus Christi for almost as long as there has been a town. In 1883, the ''Caller'' was started in a frame building ...

'', "Padre Island seashore marks 50th", ''

Laredo Morning Times The ''Laredo Morning Times'' is a daily newspaper publication based in Laredo, Texas, USA. It is owned by the Hearst Corporation Hearst Communications, Inc., often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American multinational mass media and busi ...

'', December 3, 2012, p. 3A North Padre Island is the longest undeveloped barrier island in the world. The national seashore is long with of Gulf beach. PAIS hosts a variety of pristine beach, dune, and tidal flat environments, including the

Laguna Madre The Laguna Madre is a long, shallow, hypersaline lagoon along the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico in Nueces, Kenedy, Kleberg, Willacy and Cameron Counties in Texas, United States. It is one of seven major estuaries along the Gulf Coast ...

on its west coast, a famous spot for

windsurfing Windsurfing is a wind propelled water sport that is a combination of sailing and surfing. It is also referred to as "sailboarding" and "boardsailing", and emerged in the late 1960s from the aerospace and surf culture of California. Windsurfing ga ...

. It is located in parts of Kleberg, Kenedy, and Willacy counties, with Kenedy County having the majority of its land area.

Padre Island

Padre Island National Seashore is located on Padre Island, the largest of the Texas barrier islands and the world's longest

barrier island Barrier islands are coastal landforms and a type of dune system that are exceptionally flat or lumpy areas of sand that form by wave and tidal action parallel to the mainland coast. They usually occur in chains, consisting of anything from ...

. The island is located along Texas's southern coast of the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

and is noted for its white sandy beaches. Meaning ''father'' in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

, it was named after Father José Nicolás Ballí (c.1770-1829), who owned the island and served as a missionary priest and collector of finances for all the churches in the Rio Grande Valley. He also founded the first

mission Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to: Organised activities Religion *Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity *Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...

in present-day Cameron County. It is about long and wide, Padre Island is the second-largest island by area in the contiguous United States, after Long Island in New York on the Atlantic Coast.

Geology

The geology of Padre Island National Seashore doesn't just belong within the park itself. PAIS is part of the world's longest natural barrier bar system. Padre Island is a very young geological feature that only developed merely 4,500 to 5,000 years ago, according to radio carbon dating of shells.

General physiography

Geologically extremely young, Padre Island is a vastly dynamic geologic feature. Unlike most of today's geologic features, such as the Grand Canyon or the likes, Padre Island changes constantly. Situated in a stable depository basin, there isn't much that can intervene with the barrier bars, except for the occasional hurricanes that come by. Most of Padre Island is less than 20 feet above mean sea level. Constant bombardment of prevailing southeasterly winds from the

heap beach of sand into high foredunes. In some places, the onshore wind may blow loose sand from the foredunes and beach across the flats beyond. Active sand dunes march across the island, smothering vegetation in their paths and leaving barren sandflats in their wakes. In other places, vegetation may win a battle of its own and stabilize the blowing sand by binding it with roots and vines. Slower daily movements of the sand and stabilizing effects of vegetation are interrupted occasionally by the brutal force of hurricane winds, waves, and tides. During storms, beaches are eroded, vegetation is ripped up, dunes are flattened, and channels are scoured across the island.

Laguna Madre

, separating Padre Island from the

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

mainland, is locked in by the barrier

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

. Consequently, circulation of

seawater Seawater, or salt water, is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has appr ...

in and out of the

lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') ...

is highly restricted. The combination of a high rate of evaporation under the hot Texas sun and little mixing with either freshwater or normal seawater has made Laguna Madre extremely salty. The maximum width of the lagoon is approximately 10 miles. In many places, however, lagoon width fluctuates considerably with the height of wind-generated tides. The lagoon is widest during highest wind tides, which produce maximum flooding of the vast tidal flats. Like the island environments, the environments of Laguna Madre vary considerably. Within the national seashore, the northern part of the lagoon is occupied largely by grassflats having an average water depth of about 3 feet. These grassflats are environments of very high biologic activity, serving as spawning grounds for a number of fish, clams, and snails. The shallowest parts of the lagoon lie in the central part of the national seashore. These areas are known as Middle Ground and the Land-Cut Area, where the Intracoastal Waterway was dredged through the rarely flooded wind-tidal flats (pl. I). The Hole, which lies between Middle Ground and the Land-Cut Area, is not really much of a hole; its average depths are only 1 to 2 feet. This "hole" is occupied mostly by flats supporting shoalgrass and algae. The deepest parts of the lagoon are south of the Land-Cut Area, where the muddy sand bottoms lie at depths as great as 8 feet. Two small natural islands in Laguna Madre are unique environments within the national seashore. North and South Bird Islands, each a series of sand berms or ridges, have become important bird rookeries. Some of the man-made spoil islands along the

Intracoastal Waterway The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a inland waterway along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the United States, running from Massachusetts southward along the Atlantic Seaboard and around the southern tip of Florida, then following t ...

are also nesting grounds for a variety of birds. File:Padre Island National Seashore, dunes, Kleberg Co, TX; 1 Nov 2022.jpg, Sand dunes and wildflower at beach (Nov 2022) File:Padre Island National Seashore, grassland, Kleberg Co, TX; 31 Oct 2022.jpg, Interior island grassland (Oct 2022) File:Padre Island National Seashore, interior island dunes, Kleberg Co. TX; 2 Nov 2022.jpg, Interior island dunes (Nov 2022) File:Padre Island National Seashore, freshwater pond, Kleberg Co, TX; 1 Nov 2022.jpg, A freshwater pond (Nov 2022)

Biology

Kemp's ridley sea turtles

A program to re-establish a nesting beach for Kemp's ridley

sea turtle Sea turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea), sometimes called marine turtles, are reptiles of the order Testudines and of the suborder Cryptodira. The seven existing species of sea turtles are the flatback, green, hawksbill, leatherback, loggerhe ...

s on Padre Island was begun in 1978. In 1992, the first two turtles from the program returned to Padre Island beach to lay their eggs. The number of Kemp's ridley sea turtle nests on Padre Island has increased ever since with 28 being found in 2005. Park rangers at PAIS are involved in an effort to help this endangered species. In the summer, visitors can witness the release of newborn turtles. In September 2007, Corpus Christi, Texas

wildlife Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted ...

officials found a record of 128 Kemp's ridley sea turtle

nest A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of organic materi ...

s on Texas beaches, including 81 on North Padre Island (Padre Island National Seashore) and 4 on

Mustang Island Mustang Island is a barrier island on the Gulf Coast of Texas in the United States. The island is 18 miles (29 km) long, stretching from Corpus Christi to Port Aransas. The island is oriented generally northeast–southwest, with the Gulf ...

. Wildlife officials released 10,594 Kemp's ridleys hatchlings along the Texas

coast The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in ...

this year. The turtles are endangered due to shrimpers' nets and they are popular in

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

as boot material and food.

Birdwatching

Due to the location of Padre Island National Seashore on the

Central Flyway The Central Flyway is a bird migration route that generally follows the Great Plains in the United States and Canada. The main endpoints of the flyway include the Canadian Prairies and the region surrounding the Gulf of Mexico; the migration ...

, a major migratory route for birds, about 380 species of birds have been documented within the park, which represents approximately 45% of all bird species documented within North America. The park was designated as a "Globally Important Bird Area" by the

American Bird Conservancy American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is a non-profit membership organization with the mission of conserving wild birds and their habitats throughout the Americas. Its focus is on threats to birds in the Western Hemisphere – threats which include ov ...

in 1998 for providing an "important habitat for globally significant numbers of Brown Pelicans, Redheads (5% of the world's population), Least Terns (8% of the North American population), Piping Plovers (10% of the world's population), Reddish Egrets (7% of the biogeographic population) and Peregrine Falcons (7% of the North American population)." The best time to see the multitude of the park's bird migrants is during either early spring or fall and winter, when thousands of birds spend the winter there or migrate through the area. During the summer the most common birds are

shore A shore or a shoreline is the fringe of land at the edge of a large body of water, such as an ocean, sea, or lake. In physical oceanography, a shore is the wider fringe that is geologically modified by the action of the body of water past a ...

and marshbirds as well as some raptors and

songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 5000 ...

s. The most common birds on the Gulf beach of the park during the year are the

willet The willet (''Tringa semipalmata'') is a large shorebird in the family Scolopacidae. It is a relatively large and robust sandpiper, and is the largest of the species called "shanks" in the genus ''Tringa''. Its closest relative is the lesser yel ...

sanderling The sanderling (''Calidris alba'') is a small wading bird. The name derives from Old English ''sand-yrðling'', "sand-ploughman". The genus name is from Ancient Greek ''kalidris'' or ''skalidris'', a term used by Aristotle for some grey-colou ...

, black skimmer, great blue heron, double-crested cormorant, cattle egret, grey plover, laughing gull,

brown pelican The brown pelican (''Pelecanus occidentalis'') is a bird of the pelican family, Pelecanidae, one of three species found in the Americas and one of two that feed by diving into water. It is found on the Atlantic Coast from New Jersey to the mout ...

, reddish egret, and five species of

tern Terns are seabirds in the family Laridae that have a worldwide distribution and are normally found near the sea, rivers, or wetlands. Terns are treated as a subgroup of the family Laridae which includes gulls and skimmers and consists of e ...

s, including the

least tern The least tern (''Sternula antillarum'') is a species of tern that breeds in North America and locally in northern South America. It is closely related to, and was formerly often considered conspecific with, the little tern of the Old World. Ot ...

Caspian tern The Caspian tern (''Hydroprogne caspia'') is a species of tern, with a subcosmopolitan but scattered distribution. Despite its extensive range, it is monotypic of its genus, and has no accepted subspecies. The genus name is from Ancient Greek ' ...

black tern The black tern (''Chlidonias niger'') is a small tern generally found in or near inland water in Europe, Western Asia and North America. As its name suggests, it has predominantly dark plumage. In some lights it can appear blue in the breeding se ...

, Sandwich tern, and royal tern. The two periodically appearing birds nesting on the park's shores are the least tern and piping plover. Bird Island Basin, on the

side of the park, may be periodically dry during the summer or during periods of extended drought. It is home to a wide variety of birds when wet, including black-necked stilts,

roseate spoonbill The roseate spoonbill (''Platalea ajaja'') is a gregarious wading bird of the ibis and spoonbill family, Threskiornithidae. It is a resident breeder in both South and North America. Taxonomy The roseate spoonbill is sometimes placed in its own ...

s, great egrets, American white ibis, and many others. File:Scaphiopus hurterii, Padre Island National Seashore, Kleberg Co. TX; 2 Nov 2022.jpg, Hurter's Spadefoot Toad ('' Scaphiopus hurterii'') Padre Island NS (Nov 2022) File:Kemp's ridley release.JPG, A public release of

Kemp's ridley sea turtle Kemp's ridley sea turtle (''Lepidochelys kempii''), also called the Atlantic ridley sea turtle, is the rarest species of sea turtle and is the world's most endangered species of sea turtle. It is one of two living species in the genus '' Lepido ...

hatchlings at Padre Island NS File:Caspian terns and royal tern, Padre Island National Seashore (November 2022.jpg, Caspian terns ('' Sterna caspia'') left, royal tern ('' Sterna maxima'') right, Padre Island NS (Nov 2022) File:Brown Pelicans, Padre Island National Seashore, Kleberg Co, TX; 2 Nov.jpg, Brown Pelican ('' Pelecanus occidentalis''), Padre Island NS (Nov 2022) File:Padre Island Coyote (4032086363).jpg, Coyote ('' Canis latrans''), Padre Island NS (Oct 2009)

Shoreline trash

During periods throughout the summer months there may be a large amount of ''

Sargassum ''Sargassum'' is a genus of brown (class Phaeophyceae) macroalgae ( seaweed) in the order Fucales. Numerous species are distributed throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world, where they generally inhabit shallow water and coral ...

'', a brown seaweed, which washes up on the shore which aids in shore development by acting to hold sand in place, which can eventually build up the shoreline. Currents within the

are responsible for the transport of this seaweed mainly from the Sargasso Sea, but have also been responsible for the transport of trash to the shores of the park. This trash can be anything that is tossed overboard into the

as well as items that are either washed into the Gulf from land, or from the interior of the country by means of sewers that empty into the Gulf. These items can range from tiny pieces of plastic, hypodermic needles, and lumber, to nets or bleach bottles tossed overboard by shrimpers and even objects as large as buoys and steel containers. An international treaty known as

MARPOL The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973 as modified by the Protocol of 1978, or "MARPOL 73/78" is one of the most important international marine environmental conventions. MARPOL 73/78, MARPOL is an amalg ...

is designed to limit the dumping of wastes into the Gulf but there can be violators and the enforcement of the treaty is difficult, as well as the fact that some trash can originate from sewage transport or even come from the Equator. Oil and tar can commonly wash up onto the beaches as well, 94% of which originates from oil spills, engine lubrication oil, and tanker washings. The park relies on a "grass roots" policy that encourages park visitors to take out more trash than they bring in. Organization such as the Friends of Padre have removed over 2,000 tons of trash at their yearly Billy Sandifer Big Shell Beach Clean Up the last weekend of February every year. A study by the park, started in 1994, to analyze the origin of debris, titled the PAIS Marine Debris Point Source Investigation. The park began collecting data in 1998 to catalogue and remove debris from of beach. Currently the park has collected over 1,000 days of data for the project, covering a collective area of over of shoreline surveyed. This study is one of the first long-term and comprehensive marine debris research projects started within the United States. From its result the vast majority of the debris is traced to the commercial shrimping industry while approximately 14% comes from the offshore oil and gas industry. Naturalist and fishing guide Billy Sandifer founded an annual beach cleanup at the park in 1996. The cleanup targets the Big Shell Beach portion of the island, around the 20-25 mile marker. In 2007, Sandifer established the Friends of Padre, a non-profit association to fund park projects and to organize the cleanup.Friends of Padre: https://www.friendsofpadre.com/. (accessed November 19, 2022)

Climate

Oil and natural gas drilling

Oil and natural gas drilling is allowed within the park. Congress has not approved the purchase of the mineral rights within the park even though the boundaries were surveyed as early as 1957. This has caused some controversy because the land is a protected seascape under IUCAN. Heavy equipment is used within the park and is transported across beaches that are nesting areas for not only sea turtles but many birds, including the piping plover,

, and other animals that may nest within the park.

References

External links

National Park Service: Padre Island National Seashore

* ttp://www.nps.gov/pais/planyourvisit/birdwatching.htm National Park Service: Padre Island National Seashore, Birdwatching
GORP's Padre Island National Seashore Guide

National Park Service: Padre Island National Seashore, FacebookThe White Island
1963 television documentary previews Padre Island National Seashore for future visitors, Texas Archive of the Moving Image {{authority control National Seashores of the United States Protected areas of Kenedy County, Texas Protected areas of Kleberg County, Texas Protected areas of Willacy County, Texas Protected areas established in 1962 National Park Service areas in Texas 4