What to know about "beachcombing" — Jace Tunnell highlights strange beach finds

Before the sun rises, marine biologist Jace Tunnell regularly sets off from his home to trek down the beach, snapping photos of shells and beach organisms, messages in a bottle, capsized boats, creepy doll heads and anything else that he finds washed up on the shoreline.

On a Tuesday earlier this month, Tunnell drove about 16 miles down South Beach at the Padre Island National Seashore, weaving his way around the massive tree trunks that littered the beach that day, turning back before the rising high tide reached the sand dunes and cut off his path home.

Sometimes he makes it as far as the Mansfield Channel, 60 miles down the beach. Other times, he travels to Matagorda Island or other Texas beaches. When it isn’t rainy or windy like it was March 19, Tunnell conducts his beach surveys by electric bike.

Tunnell joined Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf Mexico Studies in August, filling the institute’s social media channels with photos of his finds and weekly videos. He also recently started contributing a weekly radio segment on KEDT. Tunnell also does about 75 community and school presentations each year.

“It’s all community engagement and trying to get the community to know what’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico and to get them interested,” Tunnell said. “We think that ultimately leads to conservation and the protection of the Gulf of Mexico.”

Tunnell’s “beachcombing” reputation online goes back years, including his time at the University of Texas Marine Science Insitute in Port Aransas.

Tunnell has been interviewed by media outlets from across the country. Last year, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight Show featured Tunnell and the many dolls and doll parts he has found on the beach.

The show bought some of the doll heads with a donation to sea turtle and bird rehabilitation.

“If I find a doll head, that’s usually going to be the first photo I put up because we’re always trying to reach new audiences and bringing in a doll head brings in a new audience that we don’t normally get to talk to about science,” Tunnell said.

Tunnell, who grew up in the Coastal Bend and recalls helping his scientist father with beach surveys during his childhood, began his current beachcombing habitats while working at the UT Marine Science Institute.

For decades, Marine Science Institute researcher Tony Amos conducted near-daily detailed beach surveys. When Amos died in 2017, he was several years into a 10-year grant supporting his surveys.

“He would count everything,” Tunnell said. “He would count people, helicopters, shrimp boats, cars, the amounts and types of plastic. He did the width of the beach and water quality.”

Tunnell and others at the institute continued the surveys, though they slowed to once a week, looking out for sea turtles and birds. Tunnell saw the weekly surveys as a chance to educate people about the Gulf and began taking photos.

During the pandemic, Tunnell began making videos. He planned on making about 30 videos with the institute staff, but by the time he left the institute in 2023, they’d made about 160 videos.

Already, Tunnell has collected enough content to put out videos for the Harte Research Institute through October. Several times a week, he gets messages from beach visitors asking about things they’ve found.

“It’s almost endless, what we could talk about on the beach,” Tunnell said.

What is there to find on the beach?

Tunnell delights in finding evidence of sea life. Recently, he spotted blue dragons on the beach. On March 19, he stopped to photograph Portuguese man o’ wars and blue buttons.

“People hate these things but they are so pretty,” Tunnell said, crouching to take a photo of a man o’ war.

The beach was also covered in plant matter and driftwood in the form of giant tree trunks.

“A lot of this vegetation that’s been washed up is actually freshwater plants,” Tunnell said. “That’s where a lot of these sticks are coming from too — we think they’re coming from the Mississippi River. A month ago, they had real heavy rains.”

Texas beaches are known for the large amounts of debris that wash up.

“We get ten times the amount of debris on our shorelines of any other state in the Gulf of Mexico, including Mexico,” Tunnell said.

Many of the rivers in Texas feed into bay systems, with barrier islands like North Padre Island separating the bays from the Gulf of Mexico.

Waters flow through passes between the islands — most of the trash and debris that washes onto the beaches facing the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t come from Texas. It comes from everywhere else.

Tunnell has found West African fishing gear, items from Cuba and trash that flowed down the Mississippi River into the Gulf. He's found bowling balls and buoys.

Tunnell often must research new things that he’s found.

“That’s what keeps me going,” Tunnell said. “It’s never-ending that there’s something new washing up.”

Beach visitors can also see the ways in which people have made little bits of nature their own, reacting to the debris in strange or surprising ways. Those who visit Padre Island National Seashore and make the drive down the beach will likely remember beach art like the post covered in hard hats. A similar post, covered in flip flops and sandals, exists south of Bob Hall Peer.

“That’s what makes life interesting I guess,” Tunnell said.

On March 19, there was evidence of an extinguished campfire under a rusty channel marker buoy that washed up long ago. Graffiti marks its sides.

After fishing competitions, pineapples thrown in the sea for luck drift to the beach.

Tunnell has found over 30 messages in bottles.

“I always look at the bottles,” Tunnell said.

He’s found a few messages in plastic bottles, but most are in glass bottles. In 2021, he found a bottle dropped by an 11-year-old French girl who was traveling the world with her family in a catamaran. The message included a drawing of the world showing the family’s adventures.

Tunnell made a video about the bottle and mailed a letter to the family. Another time, he found a message dropped by a honeymooning couple. He was able to correspond with this family as well.

The proper message in a bottle etiquette, Tunnell said, is to include your address and money for postage in the bottle so that someone can write back if they find the bottle.

These finds are fun, but Tunnell added that dropping numerous plastic bottles in the ocean, something he has come across before, is not good for the environment or wildlife.

Sometimes, beach visitors might come across stranger or sadder sights.

Somewhere, sometime ago, someone cut up large plastic barrels and nailed them together with wooden boards, creating a crude float.

It could have come from anywhere, but when Tunnell came across the boat March 18, he was reminded of other boats that have washed up on the coast, including rafts made by Cuban migrants and illegal fishing boats.

The U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted thousands of migrants from the Carribean, traveling often in homemade vessels in recent years. Between Oct. 1, 2023 and Feb. 22, the coast guard repatriated 308 migrants to Cuba. Between Oct. 1, 2023 and March 12, it repatriated 131 migrants to Haiti.

How can the public help protect beaches and the oceans?

In January and February, low tides can result in beaches covered in seashells. Taking home too many of the seashells that serve as homes for crabs can be harmful, Tunnell said, because the animals can be vulnerable to predators if they don’t have a shell.

“Hermit crabs need something to live in,” Tunnell said.

Tunnell hopes that by raising awareness, others will be inspired to help protect the environment.

“Maybe it’s just, ‘Oh, I can pick up trash in my city because everything leads to the ocean,’” Tunnell said.

Decision-makers could also decide to devote more money to protecting habitats and wildlife, Tunnell said.

Beachcombers can see the negative impact people can have on the environment through abundance of trash and items discarded, forgotten or lost by humans across the globe that end up on the beach, just a fraction of what exists in the oceans.

Something positive visitors might see on the beach is sea foam. Foam is formed when organic matter is dissolved in the ocean. It’s a sign of life.

Organic matter and plant matter is also normal on the beach, Tunnell said.

“It’s what we like to see,” he said.

Tunnell leaves most everything he finds on the beach, unless it’s something that might endanger sea creatures or a particularly interesting item.

Items made of plastic are sometimes found riddled in holes. These holes can be sea turtle bites.

Rope and netting can ensnare sea creatures. Tunnell has found dead sea turtles before.

“When I give presentations, people ask, ‘What can we do in our lives to help change things?’” Tunnell said. “It can be as simple as picking something up off the ground.”

In February, 2,000 volunteers removed 28 tons of trash from the Padre Island National Seashore during the annual Billy Sandifer Big Shell Beach Cleanup.

The Texas General Land Office’s Adopt-A-Beach program is holding a coastwide clean-up April 20.

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Social media posts bring attention to Texas beach finds