Exploring Matagorda Bay

Bill Balboa leads the tour

Bill Balboa is the President of the Matagorda Bay Foundation. Matagorda Bay is one of the most diverse bays in the chain from the Sabine to the Rio Grande.
As Bill describes it, the bay features "coastal prairie dotted with oak mottes, bisected by coastal streams and river bottoms, and punctuated with freshwater marshes and tidal wetlands.” We were able to film this lovely estuarine habitat along with its wildlife populations when we hitched a ride with Bill, his wife, and David Goff who was working on the areas’s Christmas Bird Count.

In addition to the many water environs —intracoastal canal, water cuts, and the bay itself—we visited Dog Island. The 900-acre island was recently purchased by the Matagorda Bay Foundation. Bill hopes to develop it into a protected refuge offering kayaking, camping, and hiking for visitors.

The foundation has also undertaken the restoration of several oyster reef complexes at Oliver Point and near Palacios. Those projects will both serve as natural breakwaters for the coastal shoreline, reducing the erosion that has accelerated with sea level rise, and helping to return the bay to its roots as a healthy home for oysters.