Preface 
The Galveston Bay estuary is the second largest coastal embayment in the State of Texas and is 
surrounded by a population of nearly three million people in the Houston region. Galveston Bay has 
served the State of Texas by producing avenues for navigation, cooling water for industries, 
receptacle for discharges, playground for outdoor recreation and a pantry for seafood. All of these 
often conflicting uses have taken Galveston Bay close to the environmental precipice of degradation. 
Only with careful and prudent management can Galveston Bay be as "all-serving" in the future as 
it has in the past. It was this task of preserving the ecological balances in Galveston Bay that coalesced 
this group of concerned scientists and managers to present a holistic overview of what is known 
about the health of Galveston Bay, detail the multiple use conflicts and present a summary of research 
needs that would be useful for management. There is not enough room in the introduction to list all 
of the contributing organizations that provided the time and resources of their personnel to produce 
the Galveston Bay Seminar and the written texts (Appendix II). However, as organizers we would 
like to thank all of the participants for their contributions and congratulate them for a job well done. 
It was a pleasure interacting with university, local, state and federal agencies in striving for a common 
goal to preserve Galveston Bay. 
Terry E. Whitledge 
Sammy M. Ray 
Co-Organizers, 
Galveston Bay Seminar 
IX 
