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Kemp's ridley hatchlings dashing for the water at a sea turtle hatchling release in 1999 (file photo) NPS photo |
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The National Park Service leads a program to detect, study, and protect nesting Kemp’s ridley sea turtles and sea turtle nests on North Padre Island, including Padre Island National Seashore. This program is made possible due to funding from the federal government, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and a variety of partners and donors. We patrol the beach to locate nesting turtles and nests, and conduct public education efforts to alert beach visitors to report nesting turtles that they see.
Kemp’s ridley turtles nest on the Texas coast between April and mid-July. This year, staff and volunteers conducted repeated daily patrols at Padre Island National Seashore from March 30 through July 10. These patrols were during daylight hours, from about 6:30 am until 6:00 pm, since Kemp’s ridley turtles nest mostly during the day. We also continued our public education efforts and beach visitors again found and reported about half of the nests that were recorded. When possible, we examined each nesting Kemp’s ridley found by patrollers or the public to determine whether she was from the experimental project to establish a secondary nesting colony of Kemp’s ridley turtles at Padre Island National Seashore and whether she had nested and been tagged previously.
In conjunction with a 3-year study, exploratory patrols are also being conducted to determine whether sea turtle nesting occurs outside of our typical patrol season, which due to funding constraints has been limited to the dates when it was most likely that Kemp’s ridley nests would be found. These exploratory patrols are conducted at Padre Island National Seashore each day during February, March, and mid-July through September.
Nineteen Kemp’s ridley nests were located on the Texas coast this year, including 14 at Padre Island National Seashore, two on North Padre Island north of Padre Island National Seashore, two on South Padre Island, and one on Galveston Island. To our knowledge, only two other Kemp’s ridley nests were confirmed in the U.S. outside of Texas this year, including one located at Canaveral National Seashore in Florida and one at Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina.
We attached satellite transmitters to the first four Kemp’s ridley turtles found nesting at Padre Island National Seashore this year. Information from this cooperative research project was used to predict where and when the turtles might nest again within this nesting season, to aid with nest detection efforts. Another objective of the study is to gather information on where the turtles go between and after nesting.
In addition to the Kemp’s ridley nests, two green turtle and three loggerhead nests were located on the Texas coast this year. Two of the loggerhead nests and both of the green turtle nests were discovered at Padre Island National Seashore.
Eggs from 21 of the 24 sea turtle nests found on the Texas coast were transported to our incubation facility for care for protected care and monitoring. This included the eggs that were located at Padre Island National Seashore and northward along the Texas coast. The hatchlings from these eggs were released at Padre Island National Seashore and the public was invited to attend many of the hatchling releases. The other three nests located in Texas this year were found on South Padre Island. The eggs from these nests were transported to a protective corral on South Padre Island and the hatchlings were released there. From the 24 nests found in Texas this year, 1,426 Kemp’s ridley, 306 loggerhead, and 68 green turtle hatchlings were successfully released and entered the surf.
For more information on the sea turtle program at Padre Island National Seashore, call the Malaquite Visitor Center at (361) 949-8068.
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