GALVESTON — A low number of nests laid by the Kemp's ridley sea turtle on the upper Texas Gulf Coast raises fears that the endangered animal could be facing a setback in its battle to recover from near extinction.
That worry was punctuated this week with the discovery of the first nest laid by the Texas sea turtle on Galveston Island. It is only the second nest found on the upper Texas Gulf Coast even though it's late in the nesting season.
There is hope, however, that the delay in nests is merely due to an unseasonably cold winter.
“We are going to reserve making conclusions until the nesting season is over, but it is currently a low year-to-date tally,” said Donna Shaver, chief of the National Park Service division of sea turtle science and recovery at Padre Island National Seashore.
The disappointing number of nests is the latest in a string of misfortunes besetting the Kemp's ridley since the BP oil spill in 2010. The number of nests were increasing 12 percent to 17 percent per year until the largest oil spill in U.S. history sent oil drifting into the Kemp's ridley feeding grounds. The oil-soaked islands of floating seaweed are where the turtles typically live out their first years. The turtles can live to be as old as 50.
The number of nests in Texas and in the main nesting grounds in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, were down by 30 percent last year even as the U.S. government halted funding for the 35-year effort to save the Kemp's ridley.
“We've had some tough times since 2010,” said Pat Burchfield, director of the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, who heads the U.S. contingent of Binational Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle Recovery Project.
The situation is only getting worse, said Carole Allen, gulf director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project.
“This time last year, we had 118 nests on the Texas Coast, compared to 92 so far this year,” Allen said.
Another blow was the loss of BP oil spill recovery funds that had been paying for turtle patrols during nesting season.
The recent onslaught of sargassum added another obstacle for Kemp's ridleys trying to nest on Galveston Island, the favored nesting spot on the upper Texas Coast. The turtles are threatened by death in fishing nets, and efforts to have Texas waters declared critical habitat have gone nowhere, Allen said.
“With unwillingness to declare Texas waters as critical habitat for the ridleys and no funding to support patrols or the Mexican effort, we might as well say goodbye to the official sea turtle of Texas,” she said.
The problems besetting the Kemp's ridley are so grave that a Kemp's ridley symposium has been scheduled for November in Brownsville to discuss solutions.
The lone turtle to nest on Galveston Island made its way onto the beach Monday, said Kimberly Reich, sea turtle research lab director at Texas A&M University at Galveston.
“This turtle nested on Sunny Beach, right smack-dab in the middle of the parking lot,” Reich said. “If the turtle hadn't been run over, the nest most certainly would have.”
Instead, a volunteer secured the nest site, and Reich and personnel from Texas A&M packed the freshly laid eggs for shipment to a hatchery on Padre Island run by Shaver.
The nest is only the second on the upper Texas Gulf Coast this year. The other was found on the Bolivar Peninsula on June 1. In contrast, the majority of the 17 nests discovered last year had been found by the second week in June.
“We typically have nests in April, the first week in May,” Reich said. The season usually peaks between mid-May and mid-June. “Technically we are on the downside of the peak,” she said. “We've never had a nesting in July.”
There is no known estimate for how many of the turtles exist. Their long-term survival is measured by the number of nests found.
Burchfield said that about 10,000 nests have been counted so far this year at the main nesting grounds in Mexico. That compares with the 16,000 counted last year, down from 20,000 in 2012. Shaver and Burchfield both believe the cold winter delayed nesting by about a month and expect another wave of nests in Mexico and Texas. There is no way of knowing how many nests will be in that wave.
“At this point, we can't determine where we are until the physically challenged lady sings,” Burchfield said.