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More Kemp's Ridley Turtle Nests Found Along Texas Coast But Conservationists Still Concerned

Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle nests in Texas are up slightly from last year, but numbers are still low, which has some conservationists concerned. However, measures are being taken to protect them.

Credit Photos taken by National Park Service, at Padre Island National Seashore.
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Photos taken by National Park Service, at Padre Island National Seashore.

In 1947, before their population crashed, an estimated 40,000 Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles nested on the beach of Rancho Nuevo in Mexico in one day. It’s called synchronous emergence. Today, there are only a few thousand Kemp’s Ridleys in the world. 

Nests are counted up and down the Texas coast every year. This season there were 185 nests found, up from 159 last year, but there were none on either Bolivar Peninsula or Galveston Island.

Donna Shaver is chief of the Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery at Padre Island National Seashore.

"We’re worried about Kemp’s Ridleys overall, because Kemp’s Ridley is an endangered species, and recovery efforts have been ongoing for decades to try to save the species," Shaver says.

She says either no turtles nested on Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island or that the nests were missed during the monitoring. Kemp’s Ridleys like to nest on windy days, so it’s possible the nests were covered by sand.

"We need to continue to monitor the nesting beaches. We need to protect the eggs because that represents our next generation of nesters—so we can get good hatching success, protect those hatchlings as they crawl into the water. And there needs to be continued protection of the turtles of the marine environment," Shaver says.

Shaver says some of the dangers include getting entangled in debris, hit by boat propellers, or caught up in oil spills.

Louisa Jonas is an independent public radio producer, environmental writer, and radio production teacher based in Baltimore. She is thrilled to have been a PRX STEM Story Project recipient for which she produced a piece about periodical cicadas. Her work includes documentaries about spawning horseshoe crabs and migratory shorebirds aired on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Louisa previously worked as the podcast producer at WYPR 88.1FM in Baltimore. There she created and produced two documentary podcast series: Natural Maryland and Ascending: Baltimore School for the Arts. The Nature Conservancy selected her documentaries for their podcast Nature Stories. She has also produced for the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Distillations Podcast. Louisa is editor of the book Backyard Carolina: Two Decades of Public Radio Commentary. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her training also includes journalism fellowships from the Science Literacy Project and the Knight Digital Media Center, both in Berkeley, CA. Most recently she received a journalism fellowship through Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she traveled to Toolik Field Station in Arctic Alaska to study climate change. In addition to her work as an independent producer, she teaches radio production classes at Howard Community College to a great group of budding journalists. She has worked as an environmental educator and canoe instructor but has yet to convince a great blue heron to squawk for her microphone…she remains undeterred.