Damage from Hurricane Harvey to the main campus of the Marine Science Institute. In the background is the drilling rig (since removed) that smashed a research pier.THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MARINE SCIENCE INSTITUTEWhen Edward Buskey of the Marine Science Institute (MSI) at the University of Texas and his team got the word on a Thursday morning in late August that the storm barreling toward them had been upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane (it would later reach Category 4), they had just four or five hours to secure their instruments and equipment before evacuating. “We did a good job of it, but basically everybody was going in different directions,” he says.
The scramble to flee the impending storm was a wise one. MSI’s campus in Port Aransas is located partly on an island in the Gulf of Mexico, and was vulnerable to flooding from a storm surge.
Three weeks on, his team is still assessing the damage done, including the loss of at least one of its five water quality monitoring stations in the nearby estuary, and heavy damage to a rehabilitation keep for injured wildlife, such as sea turtles and birds (the animals had been moved to safety ahead of the storm).
A weather station on a research pier had continued to record data as the eye of the storm passed over MSI, only to be smashed two days later by a drifting oil drilling ...
