Welcome to Season One Episode Twelve of the HECHO Corpus Christi Podcast, the podcast featuring Corpus Christi’s Creators Makers Doers and Builders. Jenni Pollock is our guest on this episode. Jenni is a marine habitat expert at the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M Corpus Christi where she is also the Chair for Coastal Conservation and Restoration. Her areas of study and practice include oyster reef restoration and Serpulid reef restoration, all along the Texas coast, but with an emphasis in the Coastal Bend and Baffin Bay. Jenni and her family moved here several years ago so that she could began working as a post-doc researcher at the Harte Research Institute. Not only has Jenni been instrumental in forming and leading the “Sink Your Shucks” oyster reef restoration program with the Water Street Restaurants, she also is a key member of Representative Todd Hunter’s mariculture advisory team which recently helped the Texas Legislature pass a new law allowing oyster farming in Texas coastal waters. That new industry will rely heavily on the research Jenni and her team have developed and continue to perform in marine habitat creation and health. So, in the not-too-distant future, you and I will need to thank Dr. Jenni Pollock for the Texas Gulf Coast oysters that we eat!
Jenni is at the forefront of exciting new industries and marine habitat restoration and health. She has been a key leader in opening Texas waters to mariculture, and she continues to develop new methods for the restoration of the reefs that we know as the Baffin Bay rocks, which are so critical for providing the habitat for the fish we love to chase in Baffin. Keep a sharp eye on the Caller-Times for news about Jenni and her research, and be sure to read the interview with her in The Bend Magazine by Kylie Cooper, which you can find in the Seafood Issue, appropriately, or on the Bend’s website. Please don’t forget to follow us on Instagram @hechocorpus. Thank you to our infrastructure partners the Sound Guys, Clint Tucker Homes, and Sawyer Audiology. And thank you for taking time to listen!
