NPS photo

Click on the image above to learn more about the National Seashore's efforts to reintroduce the Kemp's ridley sea turtle to Padre Island.

Of the five sea turtle species that roam the Gulf of Mexico, the Kemp’s ridley, Lepidochelys kempii, is the smallest with 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.

Kemp's ridleys feed mostly on crabs, but also includes a variety of marine invertebrates and plants, especially when they are young. 

The Kemp’s ridley's range is mainly 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. Adults occur primarily in the Gulf of Mexico. The main nesting beach for Kemp’s ridley is at and near Rancho Nuevo in Tamaulipas, Mexico. 

Kemp’s ridley turtles reach maturity at 10-15 years of age. Every two years, females will swim ashore to lay their eggs, while the males spend their entire lives at sea once they have hatched. The group of eggs laid by one mother at one time is referred to as a "clutch". During each nesting season, which occurs between late April and early August (nesting in Mexico begins in early April), females lay two and a half clutches on average. One clutch can have from 80 to 120 eggs. The Kemp's ridley is the only sea turtle species that nests during the day.  On their primary nesting beach in Tamaulipas, Mexico, they often nest in groups called arribadas, which means "the arrival," and nesting most typically occurs on windy days.

The Ridley Rescue

All of the sea turtle species in the Gulf of Mexico are federally designated as threatened or endangered, with the Kemp's ridley being the most endangered of all species. Eggs and turtles were over-harvested for subsistence and commercial practices in the mid-1900s, and the nets of commercial fishing ventures also contributed to the devastating population decline. Padre Island has a documented history of sea turtles having nested on its beaches, so in 1978, the governments of the U.S.A. and Mexico joined together in an attempt to re-establish a nesting colony at Padre Island National Seashore.

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 eventually collected for transport to a facility in Galveston, Texas. The young turtles were raised until they were about one-year old. This effort was called the "head-start" program, which aimed to enhance the Kemp’s survival rate by releasing young turtles that were too big for most predators to eat.  The program also intended that the adult females released would return to Padre Island National Seashore to nest, since sea turtles return to their natal grounds for nesting. 

NPS Photo

A Kemp's ridley hatching embarks upon its journey in the Gulf of Mexico

Today, with the help of the public, the National Park Service locates, studies, and protects nesting Kemp’s ridley turtles and their eggs at the National Seashore.  When patrollers locate a track site where a nesting female emerged on the beach, but biologists are unable to find the nest after hours of searching, a trained Kemp's ridley nest detector dog is often brought to the site. Some of the collected eggs are placed in corrals, while the majority of eggs are incubated. In order to facilitate the natural memory “imprinting” process, the hatchlings are released from the beach within 24 hours from their hatching time so that the females know to which beach they need to return for nesting. 

Nesting by Kemp's ridleys has increased exponentially on the Texas coast since the start of the recovery program. Most nests are from turtles in the wild stock. The table below shows how the nesting seasons have progressed on the Texas coast since 1996 (Shaver, 2005, unpublished data). Note that these nests found at Padre Island National Seashore normally make up about 60% of the nests found along the Texas coast.

Sea Turtle Recovery Statistics

*Of the 195 nests discovered, 185 of the nests kept in protected incubation contained 17,958 unbroken eggs (25 were broken). An additional unknown quantity of eggs were in the nests that incubated on the beach. Over half of these in situ nests were predated and accurate egg counts could not be made.

**Overall, 15,819 hatchlings were released and successfully entered the water from the 185 nests in protected incubation. An additional unknown quantity were released from 10 nests that incubated unprotected on the beach (two of which failed to hatch).

2009 Sea Turtle Nesting Sites Statistics