By Bill Zeeble, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-910387.mp3
Dallas, TX – It's hatchling season for the smallest and most endangered sea turtle in the world. But this year, the Kemp's Ridley may be threatened by the BP oil gusher. KERA's Bill Zeeble has more from south Texas, the turtle's largest U.S. nesting site.
The endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles have been laying eggs on Padre Island for decades. Most nest on a few Mexican beaches. But after the Kemp's ridley population dropped from tens of thousands to about 700, scientists created this protected, secondary nesting site to help avoid extinction. Today, Mexican and U.S. authorities work to restore the turtle's population.
Cheyenne Nevada: We come out onto the beach at daybreak, we ride up here at the shore line.
Cheyenne Nevada is one of about a dozen Biological Technicians with the Padre Island National Seashore, in Corpus Christi. She puts in 10-hour days driving up and down seeking turtle nests.
Nevada: What we're doing is looking for turtle tracks that may have come up through the night.. or the nesting Kemp's ridley through out the day.
Kemp's ridley females come on the beach an average of 2 to 3 times a season every other year, to bury a clutch of a hundred or so eggs, and return to the Gulf. Nevada and her colleagues carefully transport nests in styrofoam containers to the National Seashore's Turtle Lab. They'll incubate for nearly 2 months. This year, Nevada worries. Once hatched and placed safely in the water, the tiny turtles float with the currents, some moving towards the oil. Juveniles and adults have also long-taken this instinctive path to the food-rich mouth of the Mississippi River, now glutted with BP oil.
Nevada: That to me is scary. It's the most endangered sea turtle, and if that's where it's going, to forage, if we can save the sea turtle that's great, but what about what it forages on, the food that it eats?
That also worries Dr. Donna Shaver, the chief of this lab. She's spent her entire 30 year career helping to get the Kemp's ridley OFF the endangered species list.
Dr. Donna Shaver: Our biggest fear is that there'll be a lot of Kemp's ridleys that succumb due to the oil spill. And perhaps those not killed are harmed in some way so that they are not able to be as successful at reproduction. And gains we've made from the work of so many people over so many years to try to help save the Kemp's ridley and then see the increases and get a hope of seeing them removed 136 from the endangered species list - that all that progress could be negated and we see the population take a downturn.
Since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Shaver says she has spent more than 60 hours some weeks just on the phone monitoring turtle rescues and dead sea turtles, and coordinating and assessing damage to other species. She's also tracking several adult Kemp's ridleys with transmitters, as they move toward the gusher. Officials verify 430 sea turtles found dead, though not all because of the oil. More than 100 stranded and captured turtles were coated in oil. The gusher is on the mind of many who arrive on the beach at sunrise for a rare public release of Kemp's ridley hatchlings. Nathaniel and Elizabeth Martinez, from Houston, brought their 2 and 5 year old daughters. They're also wondering about the oil.
Nathaniel Martinez: By virtue of that disaster, we don't know how much longer we'll be able to participate in things like this. So it's wonderful for our girls to share this together.
Elizabeth Martinez: I think the thing is, we don't see the oil now, and we might not ever see the oil on this beach, but we're going to see the impact on these turtles.
Dr. Shaver says the impact won't really be known for several more years. She doesn't know how many turtles will die from ingesting or swimming through the oil. She doesn't' know if adults will avoid it.
Shaver: The Gulf of Mexico is a large area. We're hopeful some will not enter into those waters. If they become entrained in eddies 118 and currents that are in the western Gulf of Mexico,
Then, she says, there is a risk.
For More Info: Seaturtle.org