SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — Joined by charts, permits, and four to eight retired shrimp boats that arrived at the press conference already taking on water, officials announced Friday a $2 million plan to sink the vessels 40 miles northeast of the jetties — generously paying the Gulf for a service it has been performing on these exact boats, free of charge, since the late 1990s.
“People think you can just sink a boat,” said Dolores Garza, submersion logistics director for the South Padre Economic Submersion Council. “You cannot just sink a boat. You have to schedule the sinking, permit the sinking, survey the sinking, and then, in May of 2027, begin the two-year process of guiding the boat downward, which is the direction these boats were already going.”
Boats: Sinking Was ‘Honestly Our Whole Plan Anyway’
The vessels, described by surveyors as “structurally nostalgic,” will be spread across 400 acres of open Gulf in 280 feet of water, giving each boat responsibility for up to 100 acres — the aquatic equivalent of one palapa shading the entire island. Fish are expected to use the wrecks to get out of the current and finally grow, a benefit they may begin enjoying in 2029, once the fish have completed the proper intake forms.
Local anglers celebrated, noting that fishing tournaments need a fixed object on the horizon to point at. “Right now we just point at each other, and that’s how marina fistfights start,” said one captain who asked to be identified only as “the guy with the Yeti.”
Fish Given Until 2029 to Find Eight Boats in 400 Acres
Marine life has been formally notified that amenities are coming. A red snapper reached at depth declined to comment but exhaled in a manner sources described as “already over it.” Ten miles away, near the shelf, the whales, blue marlin, and yellowtail continue gathering at their current spot for free, and several admitted worry that once word of the $2 million renovation spreads through the water column, they’ll be priced out of the neighborhood.
“I kept her floating forty years on duct tape and novenas,” said Chuy Ramirez, 71, a retired shrimper whose vessel is rumored to be on the shortlist. “Now they’re paying $2 million for her to do the one thing she’s been begging to do since 2011. I got mixed feelings and a barely used bilge pump for sale.”
Officials stressed the timeline is firm: construction begins May 2027, completion by 2029, at which point the boats will settle permanently onto the bottom — roughly fourteen years behind the schedule they had set for themselves.
