Photo by Stuart Villanueva

A scuba diver swims amid a school of fish at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Photo courtesy of G.P. Schmahl, Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary

Greg Mason, with Scenic Galveston, and Juliette Couzuelo, with the American Youthworks’ Texas Conservation Corps, plant smooth cordgrass at Virginia Point on Galveston Bay. Photo by Jennifer Reynolds

Dr. Ken Ellis, president of the Galveston chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, casts a line in the surf on the West End of the island. There are more than 2,000 people involved in the island chapter of the national organization. Photo by Kelsey Walling

A nesting female Kemp’s ridley sea turtle on East Beach in front of Galveston’s Beachtown in April 2012. The turtle climbed a 10-foot high dune that had been piled with sargassum from beach cleaning/raking and laid 116 eggs before sliding down the dune face to make her way to the Gulf of Mexico. Biologists captured the turtle after she reached the beach. They took measurements and biological samples, tagged her with a satellite tag, then re-released her at the same location. They collected the eggs and transported them to Padre Island National Seashore, where they were incubated in the turtle facility until hatching. Photo courtesy of Ron Wooten

Aaron Tjelmeland, upper coast project director for The Nature Conservancy, uses binoculars to search for birds on a stretch of prairie at the Texas City Prairie Preserve. Photo by Stuart Villanueva

Michael Niebuhr, a program technician with the Galveston Bay Foundation, talks about the foundation’s conservation and restoration projects at the Sweetwater Preserve in Galveston. Photo by Jennifer Reynolds

Turtles sun themselves on a log protruding from the pond in the Seabrook Wildlife Refuge and Park. Photo by Jennifer Reynolds

Artist Boat has created a patchwork of connected parcels on the West End of Galveston to create its Coastal Heritage Preserve. Photo by Jennifer Reynolds