Work to save paddlefish in Big Cypress Bayou
By VIC PARKER editor, Jefferson Jimplecute

The double-ended belly-dump boat designed and built by Marler and Associates for the Big Cypress Bayou restoration project.

It's a funny-looking little boat ... squat, squared off and stodgy, ungainly with no appealing lines ... but it's like the little engine that could.

It was built to work, and work it does along the shallow waters of Big Cypress Bayou, dumping load after load of rock to the bottom as a part of a joint city of Jefferson-Corps of Engineers wildlife habitat restoration project.

The 20-foot boat with no name was the brainchild of Clif Marler, who owns the company subcontracting most of the work with the B.W. Strayhorn Co. of Wichita Falls. Marler's company is headquartered in Kilgore and specializes in timber, sitework and construction. His company also built the two-mile road that leads from FM 726 west of Jefferson to the project site on the bayou. Access to the site is across an 1,100- acre ranch owned by Kimmie and Bob Sanders.The craft features a 40-horsepower Yamaha motor on each end and a dump system in the middle which releases special rocks into the bayou as work goes forward on creating a spawning ground for the native paddlefish.

Bob Sanders, left, owns the property adjacent to the site and provides ingress and egress. He's talking with Clif Marler of C.E. Marler & Assoc. of Kilgore, the subcontractor doing the sandbar work.

The effort is the first phase of the $4 million project which ultimately will create a 40-acre site featuring restoration of hardwood forests, urban wildscape, emergent wetlands and a continuous riparian corridor. Organizers also tout the effort for what will become an educational component.

It all began in January, however, with the effort to re-create the spawning location of the paddlefish, a species that existed in the area before the creation of Lake O' the Pines. The paddlefish, protected in Texas since 1977, can grow to 7 feet and weigh as much as 200 pounds, though most are smaller. They are the oldest surviving species in North America, with fossil records indicating they were around before the dinosaurs.

Marler said the idea for the boat was simply the result of meeting the needs of the project. It's 20 feet long and made of steel, and features a cable system that allows the operator to open a pair of doors in the bottom that send the rocks to the bottom.

"It took about three weeks to build," Marler said. "I just looked at the project and tried to figure out a way to place the (sand) bars. It just sort of evolved. I started out thinking I needed something like a jet ski that pushed a barge, kind of like a tugboat does, but this is what we ended up with."

While in operation, the boat pulls up to the shore of the bayou where a trackhoe fills it with about 7,000 pounds of rocks. Loaded, the boat weighs about 13,000 pounds, Marler said. The trackhoe, in turn, gets its supply from a small, tracked dump vehicle called a marooka. It trundles back and forth from the bayou to a couple of large desposits of both large and small rocks destined for the bottom of the bayou.

Once the boat is filled, the operator maneuvers it to the proper spot - defined by stakes along the bank placed at 10- foot intervals - and the load is released. The manmade bars - there are two of them totaling about 1,500 feet - feature the large stones in a v-shape, with the point upstream, and a straight line at the back to keep the smaller stones in place.

Plans originally called for the creation of two 1,000-foot bars, but Marler noted that there is a 500-foot section along the river that is solid rock, and during low-water times, the rocks would protrude from the river.

The purpose of the bars is to provide a place where the paddlefish eggs adhere to the rocks and thus will not wash downstream. Marler said the project, which had to shut down for about two months because of the past rainy season, should be complete in about three weeks, thanks, in large part, to a little boat that could.