Padre Island National Seashore             

The Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle

The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, Lepidochelys kempii, is the smallest of the five species of sea turtles found in the Gulf of Mexico (others include loggerhead, green, hawksbill, and leatherback). It has an average length of 23 to 27.5 inches (58.5 to 70 cm) and average weight of 100 pounds (45 kg). The Kemp's ridley is the only sea turtle with an almost circular upper shell. The young are dark gray in color but change as they mature. Adults are olive green above and yellow below.

Their diet consists mostly of crabs. Nests contain 80-100 eggs with an average of around 100. The group of eggs laid by one mother at one time is referred to as a "clutch".

The Kemp’s ridley's range is chiefly in the Gulf of Mexico, but immature turtles, probably carried by the currents, often appear along the Atlantic coast as far north as New England and Nova Scotia. The primary nesting beach for Kemp’s ridley is at and near Rancho Nuevo, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

To help insure their survival in the event of a disaster affecting the Kemp's ridley primary nesting beach, the governments of the USA and Mexico joined together in an attempt to establish a secondary nesting beach at Padre Island National Seashore. Kemp’s were known to nest on the island sporadically.

During each summer from 1978 to 1988 approximately 2,000 Kemp’s ridley eggs were transported from Rancho Nuevo to the National Seashore. Here they were incubated and the hatchlings were temporarily released into the water. They were then collected and transported to a facility in Galveston, Texas. The young turtles were raised until they were about a year old. This effort was called the "head-start" program. It was hoped that this program would enhance their survival rate by releasing young turtles that were too big for most predators to eat as opposed to the natural process in which only one out of every one hundred hatchlings likely survives to maturity. Hopes were also high that because a Kemp’s ridley typically returns to the beach of its birth for its own nesting, that the turtles would return to Padre Island National Seashore as adults. This is where the hatchlings were first released and potentially "imprinted" with a memory of the island.

Of the 22,507 eggs received, 17,358 (77.1%) hatched and 13,454 turtles were released into the Gulf of Mexico after 9 to 11 months of head-starting. The National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey locate, study, and protect nesting Kemp’s ridley turtles and their eggs at the National Seashore.

From 1979 to 1996, seventeen Kemp’s ridley nests were documented along the Texas coast, most of which were found at the National Seashore. Two of the nests found in 1996 were from turtles that had "living tags" indicating that they had been incubated at the National Seashore and head-started.

The table below shows how the nesting seasons have progressed since 1996. Note that these numbers are only for nests incubated at Padre Island National Seashore and each year 30-55% of these nests are found outside the park boundaries. Please remember, however, that the nests incubated at the National Seashore normally make up 60% or more of the nests found along the Texas coast.