Sea turtle experts clean a small Kemp's
ridley turtle with a toothbrush in June 2010, during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Although SpaceX has won praise from some wildlife managers for its plans to minimize negative effects, the launch facility is a worry for conservationists such as Carole Allen of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, particularly about the Kemp's
ridley turtle, which nests primarily in Texas and northern Mexico and nearly went extinct in the 1970s.
Olive
ridley turtles are one of the smallest of the sea turtles and are named for the greenish colour of their shell and skin.
A huge ground survey covering nearly 600 km of Gabon's coastline has uncovered the largest breeding colony of olive
ridley turtles in the Atlantic.
How many Kemp's
ridley turtles should there be in the Gulf?
Kemp's
ridley turtles are currently classified as critically endangered on the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species.
Olive
ridley turtles, hawksbill turtles, green turtles and leatherback turtles come ashore to nest along the beach during their breeding season.
Manly the olive
ridley turtles, but as well green sea turtles and the big leatherback turtles.
Not exact matches
Just seconds ago it was dumped into a hole in the sand by a female olive
ridley sea
turtle.
Patrick Burchfield, director of the Gladys Porter Zoo and a key player in recovery efforts for Kemp's
ridley sea
turtles, says the company contacted him early in its site selection process to discuss concerns about the facility.
The creatures include the leatherback, loggerhead, hawksbill, green and Kemp's
ridley sea
turtles, as well as birds like the piping plover, red knot, and northern aplomado falcon.
Michael Ziccardi, an Oiled Wildlife Care Network veterinarian advising the spill response in Louisiana, blogs that the first oiled
turtle since the spill, a 2 - pound Kemp's
ridley, has been rescued and cleaned.
Smaller - scale translocations have been successful, Wibbels points out; Each year from 1978 until 1988, about 2000 Kemp's
ridley sea
turtle eggs were moved from the species» sole nesting beach in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, to Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi, Texas, in a bid to start a second nesting beach.
Mansfield placed specially designed solar - powered tags on 24 green & 20 Kemp's
ridley wild - caught sea
turtle toddlers in the Gulf of Mexico.
Tens of thousands of Kemp's
ridley sea
turtles were thought to be nesting on the day the film was shot in 1947.
Newly examined video of Kemp's
ridley sea
turtles, which are found primarily in the Gulf of Mexico, shows that the species» recovery from endangerment has stalled at less than one - tenth of historic nesting levels.
It was estimated by some who viewed the original black - and - white footage that there were more than 40,000 nesting Kemp's
ridley sea
turtles on the beach that day.
«Scientists began to wonder whether the Kemp's
ridley could actually be a hybrid
turtle.»
«At the time of the film's development, no one was able to connect the dots between the phenomenon of the mass nesting and that the nests belonged to the Kemp's
ridley sea
turtles,» Wibbels said.
The leatherback, hawksbill, Kemp's
ridley, and loggerhead sea
turtles are all listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
The simulations showed that upwards of 320,000 green (Chelonia mydas), loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and Kemp's
ridley (Lepidochelys kempii)
turtles were likely present within the spill site.
The marine life includes black — and white tip reef sharks, lots of
turtles (hawksbill and olive
ridley), lionfish, scorpion fish, cuttle fish and octopus, moray eels, sea snakes, different types of rays (blue — spotted, eagle and, from December to March, manta rays) not to mention schools of bump — head parrot fish every full moon.
Here you can see the Leatherback
turtles and the Olive
Ridleys coming to lay their eggs on the beaches at night.
San Ignacio lagoon is also the critical habitat for the nearly extinct Berrendo or pronghorn antelope and an important feeding habitat for four of the worlds seven species of sea
turtles: leatherbacks, hawksbills, green
turtles and Olive
Ridleys (all endangered).
The olive
ridley, hawksbill, leather back, green, flatback and loggerhead
turtle are all frequently spotted at various sites on the reef.
The slope on the north coast is the best place to spot green sea
turtles, olive
ridley and hawksbills.
Six of the world's seven species of marine
turtle are found within the Whitsundays — green and hawksbill
turtles are commonly seen, while flatback, loggerhead, pacific
ridley (olive
ridley) and leatherback
turtles have also been recorded.
1 Pawikan Nesting Sanctuary Ever since Danilo Dequina helped organized the sanctuary way back in 2003, the place has been an important partner in marine
turtle conservation with the beaches of Maitum known nesting grounds to five species: olive
ridley, loggerhead, hawksbill, green
turtle and leatherback, which was last seen a decade ago.
Four species of sea
turtle (green, Pacific
ridley, hawksbill, and leatherback) nest on the beaches.
Situated in the counties of Santa Cruz and Nicoya in the province of Guanacaste, the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge was created in 1984 to protect one of the world's most important nesting sites of the olive
ridley sea
turtle.
This includes black — and white tip reef sharks, lots of
turtles (hawksbill and olive
ridley), lionfish, scorpion fish, cuttle fish and octopus, moray eels, sea snakes, different types of rays (blue — spotted, eagle and, from December to March, manta rays) not to mention schools of bump — head parrot fish every full moon and the occasional whale shark... plus countless varieties of hard and soft corals.
After graduating from Cal Poly, Serra worked for the National Park Service at Padre Island National Seashore and monitored endangered nesting Kemp's
ridley sea
turtles.