Conducting a rapid response research mission after Hurricane Ike, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin surveyed the inlet between Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, discovering the hurricane significantly reshaped the seafloor and likely carried an enormous amount of sand and sediment out into the Gulf.

The ongoing research could help coastal communities gauge the effectiveness of their sometimes controversial efforts to replenish eroding sand along shorelines while revealing the role storms play in building and eroding barrier islands such as Galveston.

“The big question is whether the sand was entirely removed from the system or if it’s still close enough to the shoreline to get back into the system,” said John Goff, survey team member and senior research scientist at the university’s Jackson School of Geosciences.

Goff and Mead Allison, another research scientist at the Jackson School, used the 60-foot research vessel R/V Acadiana to conduct a seafloor survey of the Bolivar Roads inlet just a week and a half after Hurricane Ike made landfall on the Texas coast. The inlet is the main passage between the Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay and is the route of the Houston Ship Channel as it passes between Galveston Island to the west and the Bolivar Peninsula to the east. The team used sonar to map the depth of the seafloor and seismic instruments to measure the thickness of sediments.

Before-and-after bathymetric images of the shell-gravel ridges in the Bolivar Roads inlet off Big Reef (at the northeast tip of Galveston Island), overlaid on satellite photograph. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Texas at Austin)

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