Dozens of endangered baby sea turtles hatched in New York City, crawled to the sea (Kemp’s Ridley, Most Northern nesting of Rare Sea Turtle on Record) – via Herp Digest

ABC News By Bopha Phorn ,10/2/18 

Go to https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/dozens-endangered-baby-sea-turtles-hatched-york-city/story?id=58229791 for video of release

In a miniature display of mass determination, 96 rare baby sea turtles hatched and crawled to the ocean from their nest on a New York City beach this week, according to the National Park Service.

The most endangered and the smallest species of sea turtles, known as Kemp's ridley sea turtles, crawled out to sea on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens on Friday in what experts said was an unprecedented phenomenon.

"This is the furthest north [a Kemp's ridley sea turtle nest has ever been documented], so it's very unusual that this turtle came to a beach in Queens, New York to nest,” Patti Rafferty, chief of resource stewardship for Gateway National Recreation Area, a 26,000-acre U.S. National Park Service area in New York and New Jersey, told ABC News.

“This isn't where she would usually come to nest, and then for the eggs to actually successfully hatch. It's a pretty amazing thing,” she said.

Ninety-six of the world's most endangered sea turtles hatched and crawled onto a beach on New York's Rockaway Peninsula in September, 2018.

A female Kemp’s ridley sea turtle crawled up the beach on the Rockaway Peninsula and built a nest in mid-July, according to Rafferty.

National Park Service (NPS) workers excavated the nest to save it from extreme high tides. Staff were able to save and incubate 110 eggs. Of those, ninety-six have hatched and crawled back to the sea.

Kemp's ridley sea turtles are mainly found in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an NPS statement.

“Juveniles, probably carried by currents, can be found as far north as Nova Scotia along the Atlantic Coast,” Rafferty said in the statement, noting that fishing and human activities are the main causes for the decline in the population of this species of sea turtles.

“It has a very low population, and so a very low population relates back to harvesting the turtle for food or harvesting the eggs for food,” Rafferty said.

The lights associated with development are particularly problematic for female sea turtle who come ashore to lay a nest. Female turtles will avoid well-lit beaches and lights disorient hatchlings.

The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle was listed in the United States as endangered in 1970.

The Grand Sea Turtle Experiment on Padre Island – via Herp Digest

By Steph Yin, 7/28/16, New York Times

Seventy years ago, a Mexican engineer named Andrés Herrera came across a beach in Northeastern Mexico that was teeming with 40,000 nesting Kemp’s ridley sea turtles. He shot some footage and put the film in a drawer, where it sat for more than a decade before he told marine biologists of its existence.

By the time scientists saw the footage in the early 1960s, the number of Kemp’s ridleys — the smallest and rarest species of sea turtle — had plummeted, mostly as a result of poaching of their eggs, which are prized as aphrodisiacs. Between 1978 and 1991, only about 200 turtles were nesting worldwide each year.

Mr. Herrera’s film ignited an international movement to save the Kemp’s ridley. Last year, beach patrollers found more than 14,000 Kemp’s ridley nests along the turtle’s nesting range in the Gulf of Mexico, corresponding to about 5,600 mothers.

Part of the turtle’s recovery can be attributed to conservation efforts at the National Park Service’s Padre Island National Seashore, the largest nesting site for Kemp’s ridleys in the United States. Through spring and summer, park workers collect and incubate eggs, then release newborn hatchlings into the ocean. Those near South Texas might be able to catch a public hatchling release in the next few days, or later in August, by checking the nesting program’s Facebook page, or calling its Hatchling Hotline. Here’s a look at some of what goes on behind the scenes before those turtles get released.

A Nesting Colony’s Revival

The Kemp’s ridley nesting program at Padre Island National Seashore began in 1978, when the Kemp’s ridley population had slumped to its lowest point. It was a grand experiment based on a hunch that hatchlings would return to their place of birth.

Over the next decade, more than 20,000 eggs were transported from the turtle’s main nesting beach in Mexico to be released on Padre Island. In 1996, the first turtle from the project returned to nest on Padre Island. She would be the first of many. In recent years, beach patrollers in Texas have found up to 209 nests in a season, belonging to an estimated 83 females.

“The numbers have climbed and we’re excited about that,” said Donna Shaver, chief of the sea turtle science and recovery program at Padre Island National Seashore, “but the Kemp’s ridley is still the most endangered of sea turtles. There’s more work to be done.”

Poaching From the Poachers

Kemp’s ridleys nest in mass synchronized events, each of which is called an arribada, the Spanish word for “arrival.” From April to August, the turtles climb ashore, dig holes with their strong rear flippers and bury their eggs deep in the sand, each female laying 100 eggs on average. They finish within 45 minutes, and then crawl back to sea, never returning to check on their eggs.

At Padre Island National Seashore, patrollers use a method learned from former poachers to locate the turtles during nesting season. If they find a mother turtle, they measure her shell and tag her for future identification. Adult turtles typically weigh 80 to 100 pounds, and measure about two feet long.

Ladies First in the Incubator

When patrollers find a nest, they count and collect the eggs inside. The eggs are then transported to either an incubation facility or a large screened enclosure on the beach. This protects them from vehicles, flooding and predators like fire ants, ghost crabs, skunks, badgers and coyotes.

Conditions like sand moisture and temperature are tightly controlled. About a third of the way through incubation, Dr. Shaver’s team turns the thermostat up for some conservation-motivated social engineering. Kemp’s ridleys undergo a process called “temperature-dependent sex determination,” which means higher temperatures favor female hatchlings, while lower temperatures favor males.

“We aim to produce more females, because they’re the egg layers,” Dr. Shaver said.

Sleep With a Timer

After about 50 days in incubation, the babies start to pierce through their eggshells with their beaks. Heads emerge first, followed by front flippers. Having been curled up in their eggs, the hatchlings flatten out their bodies. By the time they’ve unfurled, they’ve absorbed the yolk sacs that were protruding from their undersides, stocking up on nutrition so they can swim away from shore.

The hatching process is slow, sometimes taking up to four days, but once the turtles are out, they are in a high-energy “frenzy” state and ready to scurry down the beach and swim out through the surf.

Hatchling releases happen at any hour of the night or early morning. If they aren’t released immediately, the hatchlings can “use up all their energy and become too weak to crawl into the currents,” Dr. Shaver said.

She and other workers monitor incubating eggs around the clock, waking up every hour to check for the sound of frenzied newborns. As soon as they hear turtles scratching vigorously in their boxes, the workers are off to the beach.

Obey the Frenzy

Each summer, Dr. Shaver’s team attempts early morning public releases, so people can see the hatchlings in action. Public releases are planned for when multiple clutches — or several hundred hatchlings — are expected to hatch at once. However, it can be difficult to predict exactly when the clutches will hatch, and public releases are sometimes cancelled last-minute if the hatchlings get into frenzy mode before the morning.

“It’s all on the turtles’ schedule,” Dr. Shaver said.

And They’re Off

It typically takes hatchlings between 20 and 45 minutes to scamper across the beach. As they scurry, they take in the sights, sounds, smells and feels of the beach. Scientists think the hatchlings file away this sensory information through a complicated process called “imprinting.” Eventually, imprinting enables adult females to return to their home beach to nest, even from thousands of miles away.

While the turtles crawl, Dr. Shaver’s team stands by to deter predators like ghost crabs and sea gulls, as well as to check that each hatchling is alert and moving in the right direction. Usually, navigating from their nests into the ocean is a perilous trek for hatchlings. With help from Dr. Shaver’s team, however, an average of 17,000 hatchlings make it to sea each year from Padre Island.

“We do everything we can to protect the hatchlings when they’re on the beach,” Dr. Shaver said. “Virtually every one we release gets into the surf.”

The Recovery of the World's Most Endangered Sea Turtle Has Stalled-Six years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Kemp's ridley sea turtle nesting has fallen to its worst level in years. – via Herp Digest

Mar 30, 2016 John R. Platt, Take Part.com

Decades of efforts to restore the Gulf of Mexico’s populations of critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles have stalled and the species may be on the decline again, worrying new research reveals.

Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, the world’s rarest sea turtle species, nearly went extinct in the second half of the last century after fishing nets devastated their populations. By 1985 the species was down to its last 200 to 250 breeding females.

Habitat protection and conservation efforts helped turn that around, including the introduction of devices that allow sea turtles to escape fishing nets. Populations began rebounding during the 1990s, rising as much as 15 percent a year.

“I considered it a gold star for how you do conservation,” said Thane Wibbels, a professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and one of the authors of the new study. “It restored a species that was almost literally extinct.”

That recovery has now stopped. Kemp’s ridley sea turtles laid eggs in just 14,000 nests last year, a 34 percent decline from 2009. Even worse, the new research—published on March 25 in the journal Ecosphere—finds that nesting levels are now just a fraction of what they were back in 1947, when Kemp’s ridley turtles laid an estimated 120,000 to 180,000 nests.

Those 1947 numbers—the first detailed calculation of historic nesting rates—reveal that the species is actually in much worse shape than previously thought.

Researchers made the calculation by looking at a famous 1947 film that captured images of a mass-nesting event, called an arribada, at the species’ primary nesting site in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico. Then they compared the film with nesting density rates in current arribadas, something that couldn’t be done until recovery efforts allowed mass nesting to start again, to come up with an estimate of historic activity.

So why has recovery stalled? One possible explanation is the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. “The Deepwater Horizon spill occurred in a very critical area for Kemp’s ridley,” Wibbels said. “It didn’t occur in nesting beaches, but it did occur in very well-known and possibly important foraging grounds and developmental habitats.”

The spill area is also an important migratory corridor: Most female turtles pass through it on their way to and from the nesting beach at Rancho Nuevo. Hatchlings, which already have a low survival rate due to predation, also travel on currents through the same region.

Another possibility is that the Gulf of Mexico may no longer be able to support a large number of sea turtles. Wibbels pointed out that blue crabs, one of the turtles’ favorite foods, are in decline in many areas of the gulf.

Other prey species may also be suffering, he said. “There may not be the resources out there for these animals.”

The future of the Kemp’s ridley remains uncertain. “It’s possible that they’re going to keep going down or they could maintain themselves at this level,” Wibbels said. He believes that ongoing monitoring will be necessary to understand how well the turtles are reproducing, how many are surviving, and how well the ecosystem can support them in the future, if it can continue to do so at all.

Study indicates where many drifting sea turtles may have died – via Herp Digest

By LAUREN WALCK

11/23 2013 - The Mississippi Sound is a popular hangout for a lot of underwater creatures, but for young Kemp's ridley sea turtles it's the place to be. The warm, shallow waters and plentiful supplies of tasty blue crabs and shrimp make it downright irresistible for a juvenile reptile on the go.

Unfortunately, it's also where the carcasses of many of the world's most-endangered species of turtle have been washing ashore after a too-short life.

Since spring 2010, strandings of Kemp's ridley sea turtle have increased dramatically. And most of the strandings have been on the Mississippi Coast.

A group of researchers at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies has been trying to figure out why and where the turtles died.

"We were getting almost 50 percent of all the turtles stranded between Alabama and Louisiana," said Moby Solangi, IMMS executive director.

The group created mock turtle carcasses from a lawnmower tire and bits of leather, plastic and fabric, affixed satellite trackers and dropped them off in different areas of the Gulf at different times of the year starting in April 2012.

The telemetry the tire turtles have provided has helped a computer model predict where a turtle is likely to have died. The results point to eastern Louisiana waters, but not very far offshore.

"Although the majority of dead sea turtles were found on Mississippi beaches, backtrack analysis of the strandings indicates that much of the at-sea mortality probably occurred in a region just southwest of (Louisiana's) Cat Island and included inshore Louisiana state waters to the northern part of Chandeleur Sound," the study states.

From the mid-1980s to 2009, an average of 97 sea turtle were stranded, according to the study. In 2010, 664 stranded turtles were found, 85 percent of which were young Kemp's ridleys.

Andy Coleman, a senior

researcher and turtle ecologist at IMMS, said the oil spill may not be the only factor in the phenomenon.

"The mystery surrounding the whole issue is NOAA Fisheries, who do most of the necropsies, have found the majority of the turtles are fairly healthy," Coleman said.

The dead turtles are found with a normal fat supply, but many have the remains of fish in their digestive systems, which is "not a normal prey item," he said.

Coleman said the federal government thinks a large majority of the deaths are "by-catch mortalities," which means they get caught in the nets of fishing or shrimping vessels and drown. A healthy sea turtles can hold its breath for only about 30 minutes at a time.

However, he said the sudden increase in strandings occurred during the off season of the shrimping industry.

"There's not a consensus on what is the real cause," he said. "It could be a number of factors."

Coleman said NOAA is not releasing data related to the oil spill, such as pH levels, because of ongoing litigation. But he said studying the turtles will reveal important data about the post-spill health of the entire Gulf.

"By focusing on the species and looking at the health and the ecology of these animals, it gives us insight into the overall health of the ecosystem," Coleman said. "Because if their habitat and ecosystem is not healthy it will affect them, and at some point eventually get up to us."

An animal is considered stranded when it washes ashore, dead or alive, or floats into shallow waters and becomes stuck there, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, which collaborated on the study.

Coleman said the idea for the study came after IMMS began satellite tracking of rehabilitated sea turtles in 2010. The researchers could tell one of the tagged turtles had died and begun drifting.

Using that data, Woody Nero at NOAA Fisheries created a computer model to predict the drift path for a turtle carcass. The tire turtle study is helping to fine-tune the program.

"It's basically backtracking," Solangi said.

Coleman said the Coast Guard uses a similar program to find people in the ocean. Using the person's last known position, rescuers can calculate a probable search radius.

Tracking rehabilitated turtles led to another important discovery, Solangi said. After the oil spill, he said, many of the turtles were flown to Florida to safer waters but most of them just swam back to the Sound.

"We found out that many of them came back," he said. "All they (IMMS) did was put them through a 2,000 mile journey … so that myth changed."

He said researchers now know the Sound is very important for juvenile Kemp's ridley turtles.

"By tracking them we found out that this is a very important habitat -- even though they nest in Mexico this is where they spend quite a bit of their time," Solangi said.

He said the study is just the tip of the iceberg for IMMS' plans to examine sea turtles.

For example, the IMMS has seen an increase in accidental captures of turtles off fishing piers in the past two summers. The researchers plan to look into why the animals are suddenly attracted to the bait and fish associated with the piers.

Most important, though, Solangi said anyone who accidentally catches a sea turtle, whether on a pier or in the Gulf, is asked to call the IMMS hotline at 1- 888-SOS-DOLPHIN (888-767-3657).

Water plan threatens sea turtles, group warns (Texas) - via Herp Digest

By Matthew Tresaugue | October 11, 2013 

The endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle will be placed in harm's way with the suspension of freshwater, an environmental group warned. This will diminish the turtle's primary food source, blue crabs.

The endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle will be put in harm's way by a Central Texas river authority's emergency plan to cut off freshwater from Matagorda Bay, an environmental group warned state regulators Friday.

In a 12-page letter, the Matagorda Bay Foundation urged the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to reject the plan, saying the suspension of freshwater will diminish the turtle's primary food source, blue crabs. The commission is expected to vote next month on the plan.

'Do the right thing'

"We are asking the commission to do the right thing," said Jim Blackburn, a Houston attorney representing the foundation. "There is an incredibly strong linkage between flows into the bay and blue crabs and Kemp's ridleys."

Kemp's ridleys, he said, serve as indicators of the bay's ecological health.

Scientists already are concerned about an unexpected drop in the number of the sea turtle's nests. They found 153 nest along the Texas coast from May to July, down from 209 in 2012. The reason for the decline is not yet known.

The Lower Colorado River Authority, which is seeking the suspension order, also received Blackburn's letter and is reviewing it, a spokeswoman said.

In September, the river authority's board voted 9-6 to approve the drought-related plan, which would keep water in two key reservoirs near Austin for up to four months rather than allowing it to flow into Matagorda Bay.

The authority, which manages the river from the Hill Country to the bay, said it made the decision because of near-record low levels in the Highland Lakes, which provide water for more than 1 million people in and around Austin.

Freshwater needed

When the Colorado River is flowing into the bay, the freshwater mixes with the Gulf's backwash to create an ecological superconductor, with a seemingly endless supply of oysters, shrimp and fin fish. Kemp's ridleys, the smallest of the sea turtles, are a seasonal resident in this ecosystem.

But things have been unraveling during Texas' current drought. Less rain means less water coming out of the rivers that feed the bay and less dilution for the saltwater that creeps in from the Gulf.

If the water is too salty, it could be detrimental to the blue crabs, said Ronald Sass, a noted Rice University biologist who is helping the Matagorda Bay Foundation.

Blackburn made a similar argument in 2009 when he sued the state for denying endangered whooping cranes the freshwater they need to survive by allowing too many withdrawals on the Guadalupe River.

'Health of our bays'

A federal judge ruled that Texas officials must provide enough water to maintain the bird's habitat. But the state is seeking a reversal in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"This is different because there was a vote to kill Matagorda Bay," Blackburn said. "I don't think it's right, and I don't think it is in the best interest of Texas. This is about the health of our bays."

Rested & Recovered, Globe-Trotting Turtle Returns to Sea

A world-traveling sea turtle found stranded in the Netherlands is back home in the Gulf of Mexico today (Dec. 27) after three long years of rest and rehabilitation.


The animal, an endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle, was found frigid and near-dead off the coast of the Netherlands in 2008, thousands of miles from the Gulf waters these turtles call home. It was dubbed Johnny Vasco de Gama by its European rescuers.

Marine biologists suspect Johnny became caught in cold currents and was "cold-stunned," a condition that shuts down internal organs and can kill sea turtles. Staff members of the Rotterdam Zoo stabilized the ailing turtle and sent him to the Oceanário de Lisboa aquarium in Portugal the following summer.

Read more at:
http://www.livescience.com/17645-globe-trotting-turtle-released.html