A group from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Galveston District (SWG) take a tour of the Padre Island, a “suction hopper dredger” working in the Galveston Channel, Aug. 2, 2023. Hopper dredges are self-propelled, self-loading ships designed to excavate and load seabed material into a self-contained hopper, through trailing drag arms and pumps for transport to a disposal site. SWG contracts dredges like the Padre Island to maintain more than 1,000 miles of channel and 28 ports, which handle an estimated 400 million tons of cargo annually.