Press & coverage
What others have written about this farm and this fish.
We make our claims small and our citations big. Below, the third-party sources that cover Turtle Creek Aquaculture or the Texas farmed-redfish industry directly. We link rather than republish.
Latest coverage
Most recent first
The newest material on this page, newest to oldest. Each links to its full entry in the sections below.
- Matagorda County Receives Funding to Expand Aquaculture Education — Texas Sea Grant. A red drum aquaculture boot camp at Palacios High School.
- Texas Aquaculture Association Announces 2026 Board — Aquaculture Magazine. Nasir Kureshy elected TAA Treasurer.
- Pity the Redfish — StarChefs. National chef-trade feature reporting from the farm, with two Houston chefs on the record.
- Texas Redfish Aquaculture: A Path to Sustainable Seafood — Texas Sea Grant. Names TCA alongside two peer Matagorda County farms.
- Executive Order 14276 and the NOAA comment docket — federal policy on domestic seafood competitiveness.
- Texas aquaculture production shows growth in multiple sectors — AgriLife Extension. Current producer counts, acreage, and farm-gate price.
- Red Drum Aquaculture in the United States — Kureshy's updated paper at Aquaculture 2025, New Orleans.
Direct coverage of TCA
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Aquaculture Magazine · January 30, 2026
Texas Aquaculture Association Hosts 2026 Annual Meeting and Announces 2026 Board
Trade coverage of the Texas Aquaculture Association's Annual Meeting, held January 19–21, 2026 in Fulton, Texas, drawing roughly 100 producers, researchers, and industry partners from Texas and eight other states. TCA founder Nasir Kureshy was elected Treasurer of the 2026 TAA Board, serving alongside officers from Hayward Flow Control, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, and Gulf States Aquaculture. TAA lists the current board on its own site. An industry-association office is a service role, not an endorsement of any member farm.
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StarChefs · November 30, 2025
Pity the Redfish
Josh Carlucci's feature on the Texas redfish comeback devotes its second half to Turtle Creek: low stocking densities, indoor spawning, zooplankton-then-prepared-diet larval feeding, and grow-out ponds integrated with the surrounding wetlands alongside the Matagorda Bay Foundation. Kureshy also describes what the farm wants next — additional species such as croaker and pompano, and wetland plants grown for coastal mitigation projects. Claims about pricing, husbandry inputs, and discharge water in this article are the publication's and the founder's statements as published there; we link rather than restate them.
"Consumers should be aware of where their product is coming from. Restaurants should find out where their food actually came from and let the consumer know." — Nasir Kureshy
"It's always nice being able to tell the story of the regenerative process of farmed redfish." — Justin Yu, chef, Theodore Rex (Houston)
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NOAA Fisheries · Published September 25, 2023 · Updated September 17, 2025
Tide to Table Profile: Turtle Creek Aquaculture
A federal-agency feature on the 126-acre family-owned farm at Matagorda Bay — the constructed-wetlands work, the Matagorda Bay Foundation partnership, the engineering around cold snaps. Includes a "Redfish on the Half Shell" recipe.
"On our farm, we have built and are building wetlands to treat our water as well as to grow plants for constructed wetlands in other areas." — Nasir Kureshy
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Voyage Houston · Publication date not stated · Verified May 1, 2026
Conversations with Nasir Kureshy
Long-form Q&A. The 20-year founder arc from Texas A&M Corpus Christi and UTMSI Port Aransas, through San Leon and offshore work in the Bahamas, Panama, Puerto Rico, Belize, and Colombia, to the 2008 purchase of the Matagorda Bay property.
"We intend to go beyond the requirements of the regulatory agencies and enhance our natural ecosystem, instead of just maintaining it." — Nasir Kureshy
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OutSmart Magazine · March 2022
93 Til Brings Tokyo's Record-Bar Culture to Montrose
A Houston restaurant feature that names Turtle Creek on the record for a redfish dish — chef testimony in a third-party publication.
"It's so fresh, I think they grab it right out of the pond and bring it to us." — Lung Ly, owner, 93 Til
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World Aquaculture Society · March 2025 (Aquaculture 2025, New Orleans)
Red Drum Sciaenops ocellatus Aquaculture in the United States — Challenges and Opportunities
Conference paper by TCA founder Nasir Kureshy, updated from his 2022 presentation. The historical anchor holds: the first U.S. redfish farm was built circa 1990 in Palacios, Texas, and the six operating U.S. farms all sit within a 50-mile radius of each other. The 2025 revision adds the current constraints — scarce coastal land, recirculating systems that cannot yet compete on cost, seasonal algal blooms, and USDA ELAP disaster coverage. The earlier Aquaculture 2022 abstract remains available.
"Farming methods have not really changed since the first farm was built." — Kureshy, Aquaculture 2025 abstract
Industry & policy context
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Texas Sea Grant · April 7, 2026
Matagorda County Receives Funding to Expand Aquaculture Education and Oyster Initiatives on the Texas Coast
The Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust has funded two initiatives in Matagorda County. The first is a pilot Aquaculture Boot Camp developed with Palacios High School — a hands-on summer program in oyster, red drum, and shrimp aquaculture, designed as a model for a three-year Career and Technical Education pathway. The second expands a Master Naturalist oyster-gardening restoration project. Both are led by Amy Nowlin, the Coastal & Marine Extension Agent who also wrote the 2025 Texas Sea Grant redfish feature below. Partners on the oyster work include the Matagorda Bay Foundation, TPWD, and Palacios Marine Agricultural Research. Turtle Creek is not named in this article; we cite it as evidence that redfish aquaculture is becoming a taught trade in the county where we farm.
"The goal is to give students a real look at how aquaculture works and how it contributes to coastal food systems." — Amy Nowlin, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension and Texas Sea Grant
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Texas Sea Grant · October 24, 2025
Texas Redfish Aquaculture: A Path to Sustainable Seafood
Texas A&M / NOAA extension feature, by Coastal & Marine Extension Agent Amy Nowlin. Names TCA alongside two peer Matagorda County farms.
"Today, aquaculture plays a vital role in supplying this popular fish to restaurants and markets, since it is illegal to commercially harvest redfish from the wild in Texas, helping protect wild populations." — Amy Nowlin, Texas Sea Grant
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The White House / NOAA Fisheries · April 17 & August 27, 2025
Executive Order 14276 — Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness
Signed April 17, 2025. Directs the Secretary of Commerce to develop an America First Seafood Strategy promoting U.S. fishery and aquaculture production and strengthening domestic processing capacity. NOAA Fisheries opened a public comment docket on implementation August 27, 2025. We include this as policy context for domestic aquaculture; it is not a TCA-specific action and we make no claim about its effect on our own operation.
"Many producers are now getting orders from companies that previously dealt exclusively with China, Vietnam or Mauritius." — Todd Sink, Ph.D., in Texas A&M AgriLife Today, July 2025
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Texas A&M AgriLife Today · July 29, 2025
Texas aquaculture production shows growth in multiple sectors
Todd Sink, Ph.D. (AgriLife Extension) puts Texas at 130–135 aquaculture producers, roughly 6,200 acres in production, and more than $120 million in annual farm-gate sales. Red drum and hybrid striped bass together account for about $20 million of that from only about 12 producers — a high-value, low-headcount corner of the industry. Current red drum farm-gate price: $5.50–$5.70/lb. Sink also notes producers diversifying species and forming cooperative farms to hedge against freeze, disease, and market shocks.
"There are only around 12 red drum and hybrid striped bass producers in the state, and they're producing as much as the catfish industry in terms of value and quantity." — Todd Sink, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Extension
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Texas A&M AgriLife Today · July 24, 2024
AgriLife Extension launches genetic improvement program for Texas red drum
$300,000 USDA SRAC grant funds the first U.S. redfish genetic-improvement program. Target traits: growth rate, feed conversion, cold tolerance.
"If you buy farm-raised red drum at a supermarket or order it at a restaurant anywhere in the U.S., there's a very good chance that it was produced in Texas." — Todd Sink, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Extension
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AgMRC (Iowa State University / USDA Rural Development) · April 2025
Red Drum, or Redfish — Commodity Profile
Long-cycle commodity profile by C. Greg Lutz (LSU AgCenter). Industry-shape numbers from the 2023 USDA Census of Aquaculture: 9 U.S. redfish farms (8 in Texas), $12.5M total reported sales, average farm-gate price $3.56/lb. The lasting impact of the February 2021 Texas freeze.
Two dates, two prices. The $3.56/lb figure above is the 2023 census average. In July 2025, AgriLife Extension put the current red drum farm-gate price at $5.50–$5.70/lb. Both are cited here with their dates rather than one replacing the other.
On the census itself. The 2023 census showed a decline in Texas farms and sales against 2018. Todd Sink of AgriLife Extension has said publicly that this understates the state, because the Census of Aquaculture is voluntary and Texas producer response was low. Read the census numbers as a floor, not a headcount.
"U.S. red drum producers [must] market their fish as a premium product, emphasizing attributes such as superior food safety, locally grown benefits and fresh-not-frozen." — AgMRC profile
Sustainability rating
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Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch · Assessed March 6, 2023 · No newer assessment published as of August 2026
Red Drum — United States, Farmed in Ponds (PDF)
Independent assessment against the Seafood Watch Aquaculture Standard v3.1. Final ranking: Best Choice. Final score 6.68/10, no Red-ranked criteria. The rating applies to the U.S. category; we link rather than restate.
Cultural & culinary heritage
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H-E-B / Fin and Fur Films · October 2023 · Documentary short
Redfish Revival — Our Texas, Our Future Films
A short documentary from H-E-B's five-part Our Texas, Our Future conservation series, directed by Ben Masters of Fin and Fur Films. It tells the story of the wild redfish collapse and recovery through the Houston anglers and CCA Texas volunteers who pushed for hatchery stocking and an end to commercial harvest. The series aired on Texas PBS as Texas Wildlife: Our Future. Turtle Creek does not appear in this film and had no part in making it. We link it because it is the clearest popular account of why the wild fishery closed — the history that produced the farmed industry we work in.
"Once overfished to dangerous levels, wild redfish are once again thriving on the Gulf Coast, thanks to a healthy balance of sustainable aquaculture and wild-caught practices." — H-E-B, series synopsis
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Texas Parks & Wildlife Department · Undated agency brochure · Verified May 1, 2026
Red Drum — TPWD biology brochure (PDF)
The state's reference brochure on the species. Designated a Texas game fish in 1981; second-most-popular saltwater sport fish in Texas.
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NYT Cooking · Recipe adapted from the 1984 cookbook · Verified May 1, 2026
Paul Prudhomme's Blackened Redfish
The canonical 1984 recipe from Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen — the dish that put redfish on the U.S. national menu.
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Tasting Table · Publication date not stated · Verified May 1, 2026
The Cajun Dish That Was So Trendy It Resulted In A Fishing Ban
The regulatory chronology: 1980 Gulf catch 2.7M lb → 1986 catch 8.3M lb → federal ban 1987. Today, commercial harvest is illegal in TX, LA, AL, FL, and federal Gulf waters; Mississippi is the lone exception.
Have we missed something?
If you've covered Turtle Creek or the Texas redfish industry recently, send us a link. Press inquiries go to the same address as everything else.