The new Exhibit titled, “Texas Sea Grant, 50 Years of Science and Stewardship” will  be on display at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library until July 5, 2022.The exhibit chronicles the work that the Texas Sea Grant program has done over the past five decades as a research institution. 
Pamela Plotkin Ph.D., director of the Texas Sea Grant college program at Texas A&M University, said the main goal of the sea grant is to not only preserve the Texas coast, but also to educate the public on how to do so themselves. 
“Our program’s mission is to improve the understanding, wise use and stewardship of the Texas coastal and marine resources”, Poltkin said.
Plotkin said part of the exhibit is dedicated to sea turtle conservation and is a great example of one of the many ways the grant continues to succeed at its overall goal. 
“If you have an opportunity to go see our exhibit, the] Texas Sea Grant has been working with the shrimp fishing industry since the 1980s to develop and then implement the use of turtle excluder devices”, Plotkin said. 
Sara Carney, communications manager at the Texas Sea Grant, said the sea grant has taken diverse approaches when researching the Texas coast over the past 50 years.
“For the past 50 years, we have served the Texas coast in a variety of ways that includes bringing research to the Texas coast [as well as] having collaboration with researchers at universities to research and learn about different aspects and issues of what the Texas coast is going through economically and environmentally,” Carney said.
Carney said the sea grant strives to share this wealth of knowledge with the communities directly involved.
“We have our staff go out…and give that information to the communities and empower them,” Carney said. “It’s sort of a two way float between extension and research, research not only flows down to the community through the extension agents where they can use that information, but also the community can provide information to our researchers… to better understand the Texas Coast.”
Supervisory museum coordinator at the Bush Library Jay Patton said the exhibit hopes to celebrate the grant’s 50th anniversary by sharing its history with the community. 
“The sea grant exhibit really traces the development of sea grant as a research institution and explains to visitors all the work that they have done over their 5 decades of existence”,Pattion said.
Patton also said the exhibit took years of planning and that COVID-19 presented a new challenge during the exhibit’s development. . 
“We started the exhibit as a concept in 2018,” Patton said. “However, the largest challenge we faced was the COVID-19 pandemic. Trying to create an exhibit all working from home, trying to do as much as we can from our home computers…definitely has presented challenges that we wouldn’t have had if we’d been in the office.” 
According to The Bush Library’s website, the exhibit is currently on display despite the circumstances and will remain on display over the next year. 
Visit the Texas Sea Grant website to learn more about the exhibit and information on opportunities to work with the program.