Reefs, Wrecks & Structure
The artificial reefs, Liberty ships, sunk vessels, historic wrecks and natural reefs that Texas anglers actually run to — site by site, with depth and distance where published.
Sabine / Port Arthur
Sabine Lake oyster reef natural reef
About four square miles of oyster, one of the largest unharvested reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, with sections standing 10 feet off the bottom. It is not the original reef — that one sat in the pass channel and was harvested out by 1904 — but the one the oysters rebuilt further north over the next century. A 2007 TPWD study found that near-reef sampling produced 70% of all organisms collected, and identified fifteen fish species found only near the reef. Louisiana closed harvest on its side in 2018. Texas placed more than 1,200 river-rock mounds in 2015 to give spat something to set on. This is the single most important structure in the region and it is inside the lake, not offshore.
HI-54 Shallow artificial reef
Deployed 27–28 June 2024 and, at 1.7 miles off the beach, the closest artificial reef to shore in Texas. Twenty acres in 21 feet of water, built from obsolete concrete and metal - decommissioned drilling components and structural steel, inspected for environmental safety before it went in. TPWD lists the target species as spotted seatrout, red drum, red snapper, cobia, mackerel and sharks. It is inside the range of a well-found bay boat on a flat day, which is the entire point of it.
Sabine HI-20 Nearshore Reef Site nearshore reef
160 acres permitted, with the first 40 or so deployed in October 2018. The material went in over several years: a 120 ft by 30 ft by 6 ft barge in early October 2018, granite blocks and concrete in late October and early November 2018, more than 500 concrete culverts in 2021, and 150 reef pyramids in December 2021. Roughly $906,000 has been invested at HI-20 by CCA Texas, the Building Conservation Trust and local industry partners. TPWD has not published an exact depth or distance offshore for the site.
Galveston Complex
SS Selma - the concrete ship wreck
Built by F.F. Ley and Company of Mobile, Alabama and launched sideways on 28 June 1919: 431 to 434 ft long, 54-ft beam, three million gallons of oil capacity, one of only twelve concrete ships completed for the Emergency Fleet Corporation during the WWI steel shortage, and the largest concrete ship in the world at launch. Two weeks into service, on 22 May 1920, she struck a jetty at Tampico and tore a 60-foot hole; a July 1921 collision with the steamer Carmarthenshire added more. She was stripped for parts, towed into a purpose-dug 1,500 ft by 25 ft channel off Pelican Island and sunk on 9 March 1922. She is the only permanent, prominent wreck along the Houston Ship Channel, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and a Texas State Archaeological Landmark. She works as an artificial reef that needs no upkeep, holding sheepshead and trout, while brown pelicans, egrets and great blue herons nest on the fractured deck.
The Kraken artificial reef
A 371-foot cargo ship, cleaned of fuel, oil and hazardous material, sunk on 20 January 2017 in 140 feet of water 67 miles off Galveston. TPWD has not published a reef-site code for her in any source consulted. It is a full-day offshore run and a dive site as much as a fishing spot.
Big Man's Nearshore Reef nearshore reef
180 pyramids went in during 2018, 180 slab reefs in 2019, and 500 more pyramids in December 2021. TPWD's program page lists Big Man's as a Cycle 22 project using pyramids and concrete blocks or rubble, with deployment expected to begin in late 2019. Depth and acreage have not been published.
Kate's Reef (GA-220) nearshore reef
200 tons of concrete railroad ties plus a 45-foot vessel went in during October 2020, followed by 70 pyramids and 100 slab reefs in December 2021, with Laredo Construction assembling a further 430 pyramids and 155 slab reefs. The GA-220 site code appears in a TPWD bid solicitation title. Depth and acreage have not been published.
Freeport & Surfside
Freeport Liberty Ship Reef liberty ship reef
Part of the twelve-ship Texas deployment completed in June 1976 across four areas from 8 to 36 miles offshore. Three of the four sites put three ships parallel, 300 to 500 feet apart, in 100 to 110 feet of water. A secondary listing gives a Freeport Liberty Ship Reef site at 28.596247 N, -94.811554 W in 102 ft with 60 ft to structure and 32.04 nautical miles from Freeport, under the code GA-A-22, but that code has not been confirmed against TPWD. The ship names reported for this group are likewise from a user-uploaded source and are not confirmed.
George Vancouver Liberty Ship Artificial Reef (BA-336) liberty ship reef
The George Vancouver sank in a storm during deployment to the Freeport Liberty Ship Reef site in 1976 and settled where she lies rather than where she was meant to. TDI-Brooks mapped her with multibeam sonar in 2020. TPWD expanded the site from 40 to 160 acres with predesigned concrete pyramids at a cost of $2,155,365, funded by Deepwater Horizon restoration and described at the time as the largest deployment of reef material in Texas nearshore waters in program history; 800 concrete pyramids went in during winter 2016–17. Note the depth conflict: TPWD puts BA-336 at 55 ft six miles out, while the 1979 NMFS paper describes the swamped ship in 40–50 ft at 8 miles. Both figures are published and they have not been reconciled.
V.A. Fogg wreck
A T-2 tanker that sank on 1 February 1972 in about 100 feet of water off Freeport. In TPWD's words, "a spark ignited the benzene fumes, and the volatile cargo created an explosion that ripped apart the ship's hull plating." She is one of the region's landmark offshore wrecks and is dived as well as fished.
Christmas Bay natural reef
Roughly 5,700 acres including a shallow 4,173-acre embayment, with about 250 acres of seagrass beds — primarily shoalgrass — high water quality, extensive oyster reefs and fringing salt marsh. It is a designated State Scientific Area, managed by TPWD under lease from the GLO, and it supports a higher diversity of finfish than any other portion of the estuary. It is an official nursery area, and the edible Texas quahog lives on its shallow perimeter. Treat it as the back-bay complement to the jetty and the surf.
Matagorda Artificial Reef (BA-439) artificial reef
Just outside this region but built as the paired project to the George Vancouver expansion. 160 acres in 60 feet of water at a cost of $3,552,398, filled with three-sided concrete pyramids 8 ft tall on 10-ft bases. The 2015 announcement gave 2,400 pyramids and the 2017 deployment report gave 1,600 — the two figures differ and neither has been withdrawn.
Matagorda & Sargent
Matagorda Nearshore Reef (BA-439) artificial reef
TPWD announced this site in August 2015: 160 acres in 60 feet of water, built with 2,400 three-sided concrete pyramids 8 feet tall on 10-foot bases, at a cost of $3,552,398 funded through the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment. NOAA's damage-assessment program describes the same 60-foot site receiving 1,600 pyramids, scheduled to follow the Freeport deployment, with work on the Texas projects beginning in December 2016. TPWD's own nearshore FAQ table still lists the Matagorda site as 70 feet deep, 8 nautical miles out, 160 acres and "None deployed" - stale relative to the deployment news. Treat depth, distance and pyramid count as approximate and conflicting.
Freeport Nearshore Reef (BA-336, George Vancouver site) nearshore reef
The neighboring nearshore site up the beach, useful context for anyone running east out of Mitchell's Cut. The legacy reef was established in 1976 around the Liberty ship George Vancouver; the 2015 program expanded it from 40 to 160 acres in 55 feet of water at a cost of $2,155,365.
Freeport Liberty Ship Reef (GA-A-22) liberty ship reef
Holds the Liberty ship V.A. Fogg in three sections, plus several four-pile jackets and 300 coal-ash blocks. Outside this region's boundary but the closest big-ship structure to the Matagorda-Sargent run, and the standard long day out of Freeport.
Program context - Texas nearshore reefing artificial reef
TPWD lists seven nearshore reef sites within nine nautical miles of shore coast-wide and holds 68 USACE reef-building permits. The standard site size is 160 acres. That is the frame the Matagorda pyramid field sits in — a small, repeatable footprint placed inside day-trip range of a trailer boat.
Port O'Connor
Matagorda Island Liberty Ship Reef (MI-616) liberty ship reef
Three Liberty ships: Dwight L. Moody, George Dewey and Jim Bridger. The SS Dwight L. Moody was an EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship laid down 4 March 1943 and launched 28 June 1943 by J.A. Jones Construction at Panama City, Florida. She was laid up in reserve in 1946, transferred to Texas in 1975 for reefing, and sunk on 6 April 1976 at 28 06 58 N, 96 05 14 W alongside her sisters. This is the closest big-steel structure to POC and the standard first offshore stop.
"Keeping It Wild" nearshore reef artificial reef
CCA Texas created the Port O'Connor nearshore reefing site, originally a 160-acre permit funded with $100,000 from CCA's Habitat Today for Fish Tomorrow program covering permitting, surveys, lease and the USACE permit, targeted at TPWD fiscal 2014. Deployment began at the end of April 2017 with 500 concrete pyramids in a 381-acre Gulf site, funded at $1 million - $400,000 from Building Conservation Trust, $200,000 from CCA Texas and $400,000 from TPWD. A year later it was reported as about 381 acres with roughly 700 pyramids, some donated by Shell Oil, with bottom depths reaching 20 feet, monitored by the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation. The sources conflict — 160 versus 381 acres, 500 versus 700 pyramids — so treat the figures as approximate. Species observed on it: red snapper, gray triggerfish, lane snapper, greater amberjack, pigfish, pinfish, Atlantic croaker, Atlantic spadefish, whiting and hardhead catfish.
Matagorda Island A-7 artificial reef
The MI-A-7 four-pile jacket, base and top, reefed in place. Deep structure at the outer edge of a long day out of POC.
Brazos A-132 artificial reef
The BA-A-132 eight-pile jacket. Two hundred feet of water over a full-size platform jacket — the deepest of the standard POC runs in TPWD's summary.
Brazos A-28 artificial reef
Three four-pile jackets — BA-386S, BA-578 and BA-A-28 — clustered on one site. The longest run of the group, and the shallowest of the deep sites.
La Belle (1686) wreck
Not a fishing spot — the hull is in Austin — but the defining wreck of this bay. Built in France by Honore Mallet in 1684 as a barque longue, 54 feet long, 40 to 45 tons, 8-foot draft. She grounded in early 1686 with six of 27 aboard surviving. A magnetometer survey found her in 1995; a bronze cannon with Louis XIV's crest recovered on 5 July 1995 confirmed the identity. A $1.5 million cofferdam allowed full excavation in 1996–97 and produced over one million artifacts. Since 2014 the conserved hull has been displayed at the Bullock Texas State History Museum.
Site 41CL92 (POC 4) - probably the Hannah Elizabeth wreck
Found in February 1998 during a search for La Salle's storeship L'Aimable, this is the best-studied wreck of the Pass Cavallo assemblage. It lies in about 6.5 meters of water and produced roughly 200 artifacts dating 1815–1845: over 80 lead shot, more than 40 pieces of brass firearm furniture, 15-plus firearm fragments, copper sheathing and iron bar stock. The leading identification is the Hannah Elizabeth, a small New Orleans merchant schooner carrying munitions for Texan troops at Goliad, wrecked at the entrance to Pass Cavallo in November 1835 while evading a Mexican brig-of-war.
Indianola courthouse wreck
Storm erosion has submerged most of the original Indianola townsite. The old courthouse now lies about 300 feet offshore, underwater. Structure is structure - and this one is a monument.
Rockport & Aransas Pass
Boatmen's Reef (MU-746L) nearshore reef
A sunken barge plus 46 concrete culverts. One of TPWD's seven nearshore reef sites within nine nautical miles of shore coast-wide, and the shortest run of the group from the Aransas Pass boat ramps.
Lonestar Reef (MU-770L) nearshore reef
Three barges on the bottom in 72 feet. Also counted among TPWD's seven nearshore sites inside nine nautical miles. Barge steel holds bait in a way bare sand does not, and this is the first stop worth a full drift.
Mustang Island Liberty Ship Reef (MU-802) liberty ship reef
Four Liberty ships plus sections, in 110 feet. The big-steel site for this stretch of coast and the standard snapper and amberjack run out of the pass.
Mustang Island 828 artificial reef
Four-pile jackets from MU-881, MU-828 and MU-831 reefed on one site in 165 feet. Deeper water, bigger fish, longer day.
Matagorda Island 712 artificial reef
The MI-712 deck structure in 130 feet. It sits between the Port O'Connor and Port Aransas fleets and gets run from both. TAMU-Corpus Christi monitors 10 to 12 reef sites in the Mustang and Matagorda area with divers and ROVs.
Historic wrecks in Aransas and Copano Bays wreck
No citable inventory of historic wrecks exists for Aransas Bay or Copano Bay, and none is invented here. The documented mid-coast wreck archaeology sits north of this region, at Pass Cavallo and in Matagorda Bay — La Belle and the 41CL92 assemblage. What this region does have is a drowned port town at El Copano and a collapsed causeway pier, both above water and both worth the drive.
Port Aransas & Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi nearshore reef artificial reef
Permitted in 2011, with a contract to deploy 400 pyramid reefs. TPWD describes the material as limestone-embedded concrete pyramids with openings designed to let water circulate. Texas artificial reef sites total 3,440 acres across state and federal Gulf waters, and nine of them lie within nine nautical miles of shore as accessible nearshore fishing and diving. Texas A&M Corpus Christi monitors 10 to 12 reef sites in the Mustang and Matagorda area. We do not publish a permit site code for this reef: TPWD's prose pages give names and distances but not the alphanumeric codes, and we found no evidence that a separate "Packery Channel nearshore reef" exists as a named TPWD site at all.
Lonestar and Boatman’s reefs nearshore reef
Two sites near Port Aransas transferred to TPWD, built of concrete culverts. TPWD lists no distance or depth figure for them on its nearshore reefing FAQ, so we do not give one.
The 1554 plate fleet wrecks wreck
Three ships of the returning New Spain fleet drove ashore on 29 April 1554: the San Esteban, the Espiritu Santo and the Santa Maria de Yciar. A fourth, the San Andres, escaped and was later scrapped. Roughly 300 people were aboard the three wrecks and perhaps one-half to two-thirds drowned before reaching the beach. A small party went for help; the larger group tried to walk down the beach to Mexico, and only one man, Fray Marcos de Mena, reached Panuco. Texas Beyond History calls it the Wreck of the 300. In 1967 a private Indiana firm began salvage after a General Land Office official spotted a sunken Spanish ship near Port Mansfield, which triggered the landmark state-versus-private salvage litigation. It settled in 1984, the firm receiving $313,000 while Texas kept the recovered Espiritu Santo artifacts. That case is why the Texas Antiquities Code has teeth. The Santa Maria de Yciar was destroyed in the 1950s when the Port Mansfield Channel was dredged; the East Cut is, literally, a hole cut through a sixteenth-century shipwreck.
SS Nicaragua wreck
Built in 1891 at Bergen, Norway, 190 ft overall and 611 gross tons. She wrecked on 16 October 1912 in a hurricane, on the stretch of Padre Island known as the Devil's Elbow. As of 2007 the National Park Service described her as almost completely deteriorated: a few rusty ribs awash at low tide, along with the old engine, with barnacles marking the high tide line. A 1913 photograph of the wreck survives. She is a down-island beachcombing landmark rather than a fishing structure, but the ribs hold fish and she is the tide-line marker people navigate by.
George Vancouver Liberty Ship (commonly misplaced) liberty ship reef
Worth a note because the Vancouver gets talked about in a Coastal Bend context and is not here. TPWD places the 440-ft WWII Liberty ship nine nautical miles from the Freeport jetties in 60 ft of water, established over 30 years ago and managed and monitored by Texas A&M Galveston. CCA Texas has funded an expansion of the site. If someone tells you to run to the Vancouver out of Port A, they have the wrong region.
Baffin Bay & the Upper Laguna Madre
The serpulid worm rock reefs natural reef
Natural hard-bottom structures built by tube-dwelling polychaete worms that secrete calcium carbonate tubes. Like coral, the tubes accumulate into reef masses over centuries. The Baffin reefs run 300 to 3,000 years old, much younger than the area's beach rocks at 20,000 to 30,000 years. They take two forms: patch reefs, small isolated rocks 1.5 to 6 ft high and sometimes exposed at low tide, and reef fields, large irregular areas extending several feet or more into the bay bottom. TPWD says the structures are unique and found nowhere else on the Texas coast, and the Harte Research Institute says serpulid reefs are very rare worldwide and, along the US Gulf coast, are found only in Baffin Bay. Now the correction that matters: the popular claim that Baffin holds the only living serpulid reefs in the world is false as usually stated. TPWD's own wording treats the Baffin reefs as relict, no longer actively growing, and notes that living, actively growing serpulid reefs exist in a handful of locations worldwide. The reefs are rare enough without the embellishment. On why fish hold there, TPWD is candid: the reefs provide shelter, food and protection for many organisms, but although anglers report catching large spotted seatrout near the rocks, scientific documentation of that benefit is lacking. Condition is deteriorating. Reefs are damaged by boat strikes, wading anglers stepping on them, dredging and seismic work; Harte reports that Baffin's serpulid reefs have degraded compared to historic levels, with many areas already reduced to rubble, declining in both size and distribution, likely from wave action and increased boat traffic. Harte researchers are now testing alternative substrates, comparing colonisation rates and running cost-benefit ratios on restoration approaches. Local names for individual rocks are in common use and we do not publish a gazetteer of them without a citation.
No artificial reefs artificial reef
There are no TPWD artificial reef sites in Baffin Bay or the Upper Laguna Madre. The program operates in the Gulf of Mexico, not the bays. Baffin's structure is all natural rock plus scattered private and oilfield remnants, and we have no source that inventories the latter.
Port Mansfield
Port Mansfield nearshore reef artificial reef
A TPWD nearshore site seven nautical miles southeast of the jetties in 70 ft of water, built from a tugboat and 5,000 concrete culverts. Juvenile sailfish and red snapper have been observed on it. UT Brownsville has studied this site along with Port Isabel and the Texas Clipper.
Port Mansfield Liberty Ship Reef liberty ship reef
Three 440-ft 1940s-era Liberty ships, the site established in the 1970s by the TPWD Artificial Reef Program, lying in 90 to 105 ft of water with the ships giving 10 to 20 ft of relief. Four decommissioned oil platform jackets rise to as much as 60 ft of relief across nine positions. The description above comes from the diving community; TPWD publishes a dedicated brochure for the reef which is the document that would settle the details. The individual ship names are not identified by any source we can read, and we do not publish a site code for it. Note the naming trap: despite the name, this reef is fished and dived mostly out of Port Isabel and South Padre rather than Port Mansfield, because of the East Cut's shoaling, and it is normally reached through Brazos Santiago Pass.
Santa Maria de Yciar wreck
One of the three ships of the 1554 plate fleet lost on Padre Island, destroyed in the 1950s by the dredging of the Port Mansfield Channel. There is nothing left to fish; it is here because the East Cut is what replaced her, and because the 1967 salvage of her sister wrecks began when a General Land Office official spotted a sunken Spanish ship near Port Mansfield.
South Padre & Port Isabel
Texas Clipper artificial reef · sunk ship
Four lives in one hull. First, USS Queens (AP-103, later APA-103), built at Bethlehem-Sparrows Point Shipyard in Maryland, laid down 2 March 1944 and launched 12 September 1944, serving as an attack transport in the last phase of the Second World War. TPWD notes she was the first attack troop transport to reach Iwo Jima. Second, SS Excambion: converted in 1948 to a transatlantic liner and renamed, one of the four "Four Aces" of American Export Lines running New York to Mediterranean ports with passengers and cargo. In 1957 she was found carrying heroin connected to the French Connection. Third, USTS Texas Clipper: acquired in 1965 as a merchant marine training vessel for the Texas Maritime Academy at Texas A&M University Galveston, serving thirty years, which TPWD dates 1965 to 1996. During reefing preparation an eleven-panel mural by Saul Steinberg was found under wallpaper inside the ship, valued at at least six figures. Fourth, the reef. She was transferred to TPWD in 2006, and the 473-ft hull was sunk on 17 November 2007 at 26 degrees 11 minutes 24.695 seconds north, 96 degrees 51 minutes 40.238 seconds west. Depth figures differ and the spread is normal for a wreck on a sloping sand bottom: Wikipedia gives 132 ft, TPWD says the vessel settled to 134 ft on hard sand, and the local dive operator quotes approximately 136 ft. She lies on her port side with her highest point 70 ft below the surface; most diving happens in the 80 to 90 ft range. By the early 2010s roughly 200 species of fish occupied the wreck, and TPWD credits the Clipper with more than $1 million a year from anglers and $1.4 to $2 million from divers.
South Padre Island / Port Isabel nearshore reef artificial reef
The largest Texas nearshore reef site at over 380 acres, approved in 1987, holding reef balls, oil rig legs, a tugboat and a Navy barge. A site code appears in the scientific literature for a South Padre Island Artificial Reef 11.3 km east of Port Isabel, but 11.3 km is 6.1 nm rather than 7, and east is not southeast, so we do not publish the code as being this site. They are probably the same place described sloppily by one of the two sources.
The old Queen Isabella Causeway reef artificial reef
The concrete of the 1954 causeway, removed as a navigation hazard, is being repurposed into a purpose-built 320-acre reef site about ten miles from the SPI jetties, targeted for completion in summer 2025 and aimed partly at year-round state-water red snapper. Whether it was in fact completed, and its official name and site code, we cannot confirm. The old bridge had already been functioning as an accidental reef for years where its submerged sections accumulated marine growth; this makes the accident deliberate.
Port Mansfield Liberty Ship Reef (fished from here) liberty ship reef
Named for Port Mansfield but fished and dived mostly out of Port Isabel and South Padre, because the East Cut shoals and Brazos Santiago does not. Three 440-ft 1940s Liberty ships established in the 1970s by the TPWD Artificial Reef Program, giving 10 to 20 ft of relief, plus four decommissioned oil platform jackets rising to as much as 60 ft of relief across nine positions. The individual ship names are not identified in any source we can read. TPWD publishes a brochure for the site.