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Galveston Bay
The shallow estuary at the heart of the Houston coast
Galveston Bay is a large, shallow estuary on the upper Texas coast, sheltered from the Gulf of Mexico by the Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island and fed mainly by the Trinity and San Jacinto rivers. Averaging only about 6 to 10 feet deep, it is one of the most productive estuaries in the country, famous for its oysters, shrimp, and blue crabs.
It is also one of the busiest, lying at the seaward end of the Houston Ship Channel, which links the Port of Houston - among the largest ports in the United States - to the open Gulf, surrounded by one of the world's great concentrations of petrochemical industry. That mix of rich fisheries and heavy industry has made the bay a focus of long-running efforts to balance commerce, hurricanes, and ecology on a rapidly growing coast.