- [Jay] Funding for this program was provided by.

- [Chrissy] The J.W.

Couch Foundation.

- [Jay] Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University Kingsville.

- [Chrissy] Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi.

- [Jay] The Gulf of Mexico Trust.

- [Chrissy] Threshold Foundation.

- [Jay] Shield-Ayers Foundation.

- [Chrissy] Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation.

Gossamer Gear.

Cina Alexander Forgason.

Pam and Will Harte.

- [Jay] Helen Alexander, Blair and Wade G. Chappell, Claire Dewar, Cheryl and Paul Drown, Deborah and David McBride, Myfe Moore, Shirley and Dennis Rich, and the Texas Water Foundation.

- [Chrissy] For more information and a complete list of funders, please visit ChasingTheTidesSeries.com.

(bright music) - [Jay] The Texas Coast.

- [Chrissy] From the Sabine River to the Rio Grande.

- [Jay] It's diverse.

- [Chrissy] It's industrial.

- [Jay] It's a buffer.

- [Chrissy] A gateway.

- [Jay] And it's rapidly changing.

- [Chrissy] We're going to show it to you as we walk every inch.

- This is "Chasing the Tide."

(light music) So has anything changed, or... Do you have a different perspective on anything that you expected might be different?

- I don't know.

Like, I think for me, it was more just a learning experience.

And to see for myself a lot of it that I spent my whole life in Texas and had missed a lot of it.

Because I really, just growing up in San Antonio, I only went to Port Aransas and South Padre.

The whole upper coast was all new to me.

A lot of that stuff in between.

I've been amazed at how many people we've seen so far.

They say that this is their favorite place to come and fish.

And they're pretty isolated.

There's no cell service out here.

- Like about every five miles I feel like we've met somebody or somebody's come to meet us and tell us their story about why they love the coast and- - [Chrissy] I mean, I think it was more like people looking out for our safety too?

- [Jay] Yeah.

- And messaging us and saying "How are you gonna get across this?

Like this is dangerous, make sure you have a ride lined up, or..." I don't know, just it was...

It was neat that people were also looking out for us as well.

- Yeah.

We basically have gone, at this point, 18 days with one day of rest and eight to 10 hours of walking.

And our bodies have just, like, given up and said, "Okay, you're obviously going to do this, whether I like it or not.

And so, go for it."

- [Chrissy] And I keep getting reminded that I'm meeting my fitness goal every day.

- [Jay] What is it, 70,000 steps a day?

- [Chrissy] I don't know how many.

- [Jay] And burning, like, 4,000 calories?

- [Chrissy] It's going to think I'm so lazy when I get back home.

- [Jay] Yeah.

Along with nearly 2 million acres of privately owned coastal prairie, vast tidal flats, and one of only six hypersaline lagoons in the world, Padre Island represents Texas' wild coast.

(light pensive music) - [Chrissy] But Texas is leading the nation in population growth, with more than 1,400 people moving here each day.

- [Jay] Nearly every one of Texas' 30 million residents lives in a watershed that empties into our bays, beaches, and ocean.

The rivers and creeks that run to the Gulf carry not only fresh water and nutrients, but they also carry trash.

- Is that a barrel?

Hmm.

Texas has 10 times more trash wash up on our beaches than anywhere else in the Gulf of Mexico.

Currents and winds push and pull debris from the Mississippi River, Central and South America, and as far away as West Africa.

But Texans also play their part.

- [Jay] Over 362 million pieces of trash accumulate on Texas roadways each year.

And much of that litter will make its way into a river, lake, and onto our beaches.

And we saw so much strange litter on our walk that at times it was humorous.

But honestly, it was heartbreaking.

- [Chrissy] We met some folks in Surfside Beach who came out regularly to remove trash and debris.

We can all do our part by reducing our use, especially of forever trash like plastics, that end up in our aquifers, our estuaries, and our oceans.

- [Jay] The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for instance, is made up of a lot of microplastics along with larger items like fishing gear and shoes.

It's estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

Jace Tunnell is the director of community engagement for the Harte Research Institute and founder of the Citizen Science Project, Nurdle Patrol.

Why should we care?

- Right.

So we're lucky in Texas in that we have the Texas General Land Office that created a program called Adopt-A-Beach Program.

They've been collecting data for over 30 years now with a data sheet on the different types of trash that are being collected along the beaches all across Texas.

And so they can actually see how trash has changed over time from going from glass and cans to going more towards plastic.

And you know the number one item that is found anywhere in the world in a trash cleanup is cigarette butts.

A lot of people don't know it but the filter is actually plastic.

Once it gets to be that small piece using anything under five millimeters, we call it microplastic.

You know, really plastic doesn't dissolve.

It just gets into smaller and smaller pieces over time which, the bad thing is, it becomes available to animals.

So the biggest impact is the wildlife, especially birds.

You'll see birds up and down feeding in that high tide line.

So we know they're eating plastic.

So you can find almost anything made of plastic, whether it's a rubber sole or a bag or a bottle and it'll have a diamond in it.

And that's a turtle bite.

- What should we be doing looking forward to prevent some of this trash from washing up and really from being in our ocean?

- In your on own personal life, think about your consumption.

Just thinking about what you're using on a daily basis can have an impact.

Large scale if a lot of people do that.

And really the whole goal is if you can get somebody to care about what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico, you get them to start trying to care for it and want to protect it.

- [Chrissy] One very important reason to care about what ends up in the Gulf is that it's home to one of the smallest and most critically endangered sea turtles in the world, the Kemp's Ridley.

Seeing the dangers that plastics pose to turtles hit particularly close to home.

Several months before the walk, our family have been lucky enough to see hatchlings being released into the wild on South Padre Island.

- So you can see I'm just a little bit closer.

He looks just like our big turtles, but he's got all this great coloration on both sides and he's gonna be a like lighter color on the bottom and he's gonna be an olive-gray color on the top.

- [Jay] Oh my gosh.

- [Chrissy] Oh my gosh.

Look at 'em!

Oh, he's ready and he's the first one.

- Some of them got turned around with the wave, look you see him there.

(gentle music) (waves murmuring) - [Chrissy] Nest temperature decides sex, right?

- [Amy] It does.

So in our sea turtles, we're gonna see that cooler temperatures make male turtles and warmer temperatures make female turtles.

And so we put temperature loggers actually in every single nest, so that after they come out, we can look at the data to see what temperatures they were at.

This is still early in the season.

So usually earlier in the season we see more males than females, but we won't know that until after the season's over and we can analyze all the data.

Our adults will feed off the coast of Florida.

They'll go down to the Yucatan and feed and then they'll come back and nest here.

So we'll see them.

- At this exact- - Yeah, so these guys will take about 12 years to reach adulthood, and once they've done that, they'll actually come back here to nest.

And that's part of why we put them down on the sand and let them crawl in the water instead of putting them directly in the water, because them crawling down the sand is an important part of that imprinting process.

So they know what beach they came from, so they can come back here and lay their eggs in about 12 years or so.

Before our interventions, if we had just left the nest out on the beach, then they would be facing predators from coyotes and raccoons digging up the nest and eating the eggs before they even made it out.

So one of the reasons that we move nests in Texas is because of predators, but the main reason is beach driving.

So you can drive across our beaches and you can see these guys are really little.

They're really hard to see.

So it would be very easy for someone to hit them without seeing them.

And the same with our nesting females.

So we move the nest to protect them.

- [Chrissy] A team of Sea Turtle, Inc. staff and volunteers patrol the beach sunrise to sunset from April to August each year looking for nesting females.

Once they discover a nest, staff safely move the eggs to a protected incubation site.

After 45 to 55 days, the Kemp's hatchlings emerge and are released into the ocean.

- Our conservation efforts, we're estimating it's probably around about maybe one in 800, because of protecting them from the beach and making sure they're at least getting this far.

But once they're out in the water, they're kind of on their own a little bit.

These guys might need a little help.

(light music) - [Jay] Look at this guy here.

- [Chrissy Voiceover] The experience of seeing the newly hatched turtles wading into the sea for the first time was eye-opening for us.

And them.

One of the things we always try to instill in our kids is a love of the natural world, and hopefully moments like this do that.

(waves murmuring) - [Jay] Something those turtles hadn't planned on that summer were record-setting temperatures.

Then the following winter, a cold snap hit South Texas, and sea turtles feeding in the shallow Laguna Madre got caught.

- When we end up getting cold weather that doesn't really align with our normal temperatures it creates quite a bit of challenge for cold-blooded animals like sea turtles.

So when the water temperature gets cold, their core body temperature gets below what it is used to being, and even though they're awake and alert, they continue to have those normal instincts like, I should be moving my flippers to swim, I should be raising my head to draw breath.

And what ends up happening unfortunately is they float to the surface of the water and if not rescued or pushed on to dry land by the winds, they will drown there, awake and alert but unable to raise their head to draw breath.

(gentle music) - [Chrissy] On a cold week in January of 2024, Sea Turtle, Inc. and community volunteers rescued and released nearly 1,000 cold-stunned turtles.

- Bringing a buddy!

- [Chrissy] They depend on our cooperative efforts for survival.

As we would soon find out, they aren't the only ones.

- [Jay] On the north end of South Padre Island, Sam Voss, a veteran survey volunteer, and Gregg Doney, project leader with EarthSpan, caught up with us.

Mutual friends had told us to keep an eye out for each other.

They'd captured two young female peregrines, one of which had been born in the Arctic just three months prior.

- [Chrissy] After seeing peregrines earlier in the walk, these seemed to be some of the last individuals coming through on their way south.

Some will stop here, Gregg said, as they make a 16,000 mile round-trip journey from the Arctic to as far south as Patagonia.

The cold front that blew through a week prior assisted these birds on their flights out, so they didn't have much need to stop on Padre Island.

- [Jay] Sam and Gregg were taking blood and feather samples to study their genetics and test for mercury.

They were talking about the fact that we have a lot of mercury globally.

It's in the air.

And in the Arctic, much of it ultimately settles in the permafrost.

As the permafrost melts, it concentrates in the watershed.

Eventually, peregrines may consume prey with high levels of mercury, which can then enter their bloodstream.

- [Chrissy] The EarthSpan team and collaborators are tracking trends of mercury exposure in peregrines.

Through their research, they can link birds with high levels of mercury in their blood, to their Arctic origin, and focus conservation efforts in those areas.

Because it was Jay's birthday, they let him release one.

(anxious music) (bright triumphant music) Because they knew it was a dream of mine, they let me release one as well.

(bright triumphant music continues) Prior to the walk, I was lucky enough to join Peregrine Fund biologists Paul Juergens and Brian Mutch, former co-workers of mine, as they banded Aplomado Falcon hatchlings near South Padre Island to observe their movement, behavior, and survival.

They were found in the American Southwest until the 1950s, and reintroduction efforts have been successful with breeding pairs living on the South Texas coast, in part due to artificial nesting structures built by The Peregrine Fund in cooperation with private landowners who were kind enough to give us permission to film.

Public-private partnerships like this one mean that at-risk populations like the Aplomado have a shot at surviving.

- And then the males we leave silver on this leg.

- [Chrissy] Aplomados are the only remaining falcon on the U.S.

Endangered Species list.

- A recent study found that the diversity in this population is just as good as the founding population, which Brian was involved in collecting some of those birds from Mexico.

- Yeah, in 1987 and 1988, when we started, The Peregrine Fund became involved in this recovery effort.

Pete Jenny, who was the director at the time of the program, got permits from Mexico during those two years to collect young.

And we took seven birds in 1987 and 10 in 1988, and there were 10 taken during a 1970s collection, which actually were already breeding and producing some young, 27 birds in captivity.

And from that investment, we raised over 2,000 young for the recovery effort and released those along the Gulf Coast of Texas here and the Chihuahuan Desert.

And that's where the founders of this bird that we're holding today would have come from, those birds from Mexico.

So this year, I think right now we're looking at 21 pairs, 11 in the barrier island population.

There's two populations have been created.

One is about 100 miles north of here, and it exists, the nesting part of the population exists only on the barrier islands up to the north, Matagorda, San Jose, Mustang Island.

No mites.

Yeah, she's definitely a day older.

- [Jay] Okay.

Yeah, I got that.

- A lot less down on the back.

- I know you could, yeah, for sure.

- [Paul] Just kinda try to keep their shoulders in.

(falcons screeching) Down low.

(falcons screeching) - [Chrissy Voiceover] As recently as 1994, there were no known breeding Aplomado falcons within the United States.

Captive propagation and reintroduction efforts have returned this beautiful falcon to its native Texas habitat.

The Peregrine Fund's ultimate goal is to see this species removed from the Endangered Species list.

(energetic music) Continuing down South Padre Island, some of my habits had rubbed off on Ellis.

My seashell collection was taking up major real estate in my backpack.

- [Jay] Down on this part of the island, past Mansfield Cut, people really have to want to be here if they're here.

It's remote, not easy to get to, but it's gorgeous.

I think a lot of people would be surprised that this was a Texas beach.

But as you make your way into the town of South Padre Island, a popular tourist destination, the open beach and line of dunes give way to houses, condos, and a lot of people enjoying the Texas shore.

But then something comes up that's really out of place, a launch pad for spaceships.

SpaceX operates Starbase, its platform, production, and development facility just a few hundred yards from Boca Chica Beach, a popular gathering place for folks in the Rio Grande Valley.

- [Chrissy] This vast expanse of shallow, windswept tidal flats is a critical stop-over site for shorebirds during migration and nesting.

Local researchers have documented shifts and overall reductions in shorebird nesting activity due to rocket testing and launches.

The first launches began in 2019 and have since become a major component of the American Space Program.

We lucked out a little bit with our timing because of SpaceX's launch schedule.

If we'd been one day earlier or later, we wouldn't have been able to walk the beach.

SpaceX, with county and state permission, close public access on those days, highlighting again the importance of the Open Beaches Act.

- [Jay] We have so much unfinished business to do on Earth that leaving it now seems premature.

Seeing Earth from a different vantage point, however, does put our precious world, filled with life, into perspective.

- I returned from my very first space station mission, just awestruck by the beauty of the Earth.

As you look at the Earth, we can see that humanity has made changes.

We can see cities.

And so you then start to think about our stewardship of the Earth.

Because on the space station, we think about the space station as our home in space.

We spend about 30% of our time as a crew conducting corrective and preventive maintenance.

And then you look back at the Earth.

It is humanity's spaceship.

We are all one crew on Spaceship Earth.

And yet, I would hazard to say that very few of us spend anywhere close to 30% of our time taking care of this spaceship, taking care of our home planet, the Earth.

This is all we've got.

- This was truly the one thing I wanted to do in life is preserve the coast for my grandchildren and yours.

I wanted them to be able to enjoy the beach the same way I had.

The one thing that was the meaning of life for me, and that is preserving the Texas coast.

And don't make me cry now.

(sniffles) - [Chrissy] And after 370 miles and 20 days of pretty much non-stop walking, we made it to the Rio Grande.

Wait, where does it end?

It ends like- - [Jay] Where is the finish?

Where is the finish?

(people murmuring) - [Chrissy] There it is.

(people applauding) (hopeful music) - [Jay Voiceover] jThis journey would not have been possible without our free and unrestricted right to access Texas beaches.

Period.

(all laughing) - Good job, man.

I can't believe you guys.

20 miles a day of hard work.

- [Jay Voiceover] In a state with so little public land, the Texas coast is our last great gathering place.

A town square 370 miles long.

Our beaches are a great equalizer.

They're free and accessible and provide rare opportunities to interact with each other and our shared history, regardless of background or belief.

- [Chrissy Voiceover] It also wouldn't have been possible without all of the people who helped us get from island to island, get out of the rain, and tell us why they're in love with the Texas coast.

- I honestly didn't think that like I could do 20 miles a day.

I mean, you said we're doing 20 and I was like, "Okay."

And then it got closer and closer and closer.

And then I'm like, "Holy crap.

We're going to do 20 miles a day."

And you knew I could do it.

Believing in me, I guess.

- [Jay] I got very emotional.

- And that was like your true self, you know?

- [Chrissy Voiceover] While I was sad that our journey had come to an end.

- [Jay Voiceover] It's emotional at the end of these long efforts.

You think about all the preparation, planning, and people who've helped you along the way.

Once you stop moving, it all kind of catches up to you.

Hopefully, one of the many things that comes out of this project is that people pay attention to the coast and think it's beautiful, complex, and vibrant.

- [Chrissy Voiceover] We have a different perspective on our relationship, what's important in our lives, and the work we want to do.

- [Jay] We also have this string of barrier islands and they're worth protecting and leaving better than we find them today.

- [Chrissy Voiceover] If we are going to chase the rising tide, we have to adapt.

- [Jay] We have to invest in these islands and ecosystems.

They're our first line of defense and are biological hot spots.

- [Chrissy] We have to learn from those for whom adaptation and coexistence have been a means of survival, and take care of those who rely on us for their survival.

- [Jay] And we have to take individual actions that reflect our shared values and keep this 370 mile shoreline clean and open for all Texans, for all time.

- [Chrissy] Because Texas is a coastal state, and not just a state with a coast.

(hopeful music) (hopeful music continues) - [Jay] Funding for this program was provided by.

- [Chrissy] The J.W.

Couch Foundation.

- [Jay] Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University Kingsville.

- [Chrissy] Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi.

- [Jay] The Gulf of Mexico Trust.

- [Chrissy] Threshold Foundation.

- [Jay] Shield-Ayers Foundation.

- [Chrissy] Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation.

Gossamer Gear.

Cina Alexander Forgason.

Pam and Will Harte.

- [Jay] Helen Alexander, Blair and Wade G. Chappell, Claire Dewar, Cheryl and Paul Drown, Deborah and David McBride, Myfe Moore, Shirley and Dennis Rich, and the Texas Water Foundation.

- [Chrissy] For more information and a complete list of funders, please visit ChasingTheTidesSeries.com.

(bright music)