Why a Rare Underwater Worm May Be Key to Saving Baffin Bay

The fish are always biting in Baffin Bay, a one-hundred-square-mile body of water that cuts in toward the South Texas Plains about two hours south of Corpus Christi. The bay is home to redfish and speckled trout, prized sport fish that beckon anglers nationwide. It’s also known as a great spot to catch black drum. Roughly half of all black drum caught in the Upper Laguna Madre, the vast saltwater lagoon that separates the mainland from Padre Island, comes from Baffin. This abundance would appear to be at odds with the bay’s extreme salinity: salt levels here can rise to one hundred parts per thousand, three times that of the Gulf of Mexico. But this is no Dead Sea. For more than a century, Texans…

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