Center for Texas Beaches and Shores

By the time Harvey hit the Houston and Galveston area, it had ceased to be the monstrous category 5 hurricane that seemed to erase the entire Gulf of Mexico from radar maps.

Dr. Sam Brody, professor of Marine Sciences, director of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores at Texas A&M University at Galveston, professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at the Texas A&M University College of Architecture and a nationally known authority on environmental planning, was selected to be part of the inaugural class of Presidential Impact Fellows.

For the past several years beachgoers along the upper Texas coast have found their beautiful sandy beaches cluttered with ugly, stinky seaweed. The good news is that Texas A&M University at Galveston researchers who study our beaches and shores are getting help from those who study space.

Texas A&M University at Galveston officially dedicated its highly sophisticated, 109,000 square-foot Ocean and Coastal Studies Building (OCSB) with a special ceremony on Nov. 11.

Many residents of the state don’t know that one of every four Texans lives along the coast, or perhaps that Texas has 16 major ports and more than 3,300 miles of bays and estuaries.