On May 29, 1996, a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle made history.  She emerged from the waves and laboriously crawled up onto the beach where she was born—the sands of Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi. With much sighing and flipping of sand, she dug a pit with her back legs and deposited about a hundred eggs inside it. She covered them up and disappeared again into the rolling waves.

"What's the big deal?" you ask.  "Aren't turtles nesting, like, every day?"  Yes, but this turtle was very special.  Let me tell you the story...

49 years earlier, an amateur photographer filmed the “arribada,” or arrival, of some 40,000 nesting Kemp’s ridleys to nest on Rancho Nuevo Beach in Mexico (see the amazing footage on YouTube!). The exact location of this spectacular event was unknown to scientists for decades but, unfortunately, not to poachers. Over the years, they dug up and sold billions of the  turtles’ eggs.  By the mid-1970’s, only an estimated 500 nesting Kemps’ ridleys remained. 

Rallying to the cause, a group of scientists proposed a radical project to re-establish a secondary nesting site on Padre Island (some had been known to nest in Texas). They collected a portion of the eggs before they touched the sands of Rancho Nuevo and incubated them in Texas. Just after emerging, the tiny hatchlings were briefly immersed in the Texas surf (we think this "first swim" imprints their reptilian brains with what they need to know when they return as adults) and then kept in captivity another ten months or so. 

Being a bit bigger when they were finally freed, they were more likely to survive to adulthood.  Each ridley was released with a “living tag,” a bit of transplanted shell, that allowed scientists to identify them when they returned as adults.  Would we ever see an “arribada” on the Texas coast? The scientists crossed their fingers and waited. And waited . . . it takes at least 10 years for a sea turtle to mature! 

On that May evening, one of the very scientists who had worked so hard for the Kemp’s ridleys was there to see that nesting turtle. Can you imagine the joy she felt when she saw, there atop its shell, one of those “living tags?” It was the first confirmed nesting of one of Texas’ “head started” Kemp’s ridley sea turtles! 

Each year since then, we’ve found more and more turtles nesting here. In 2007 a volunteer crew of “turtle patrollers” found a record 128 nests along the Texas coast!  In 2006, here was even a “mini-arribada” on April 26—ten nests on the same day!! 

Besides the scientists, we must also thank the thousands of school children and other people in the 1980’s who wrote to lawmakers asking them NOT to cut funding on the head starting project. In their wisdom, the politicians listened and the rescue effort continued from 1978 to 1993.

The site also describes initiatives to protect the Kemp’s ridley and their coastal habitat. If you have one of those sea turtle fanatics in your family, you might help them compose a letter to today’s lawmakers requesting their support. It’s never too early join in the democratic process!