| 5/21/24 @ 12:45 p.m. We have some very exciting new for this week's Turtle Talk Tuesday. The Amelia Island Sea Turtle Watch announced yesterday that after 38 years of documenting sea turtle species on Amelia Island, we finally received a visit from the very rare Kemp's Ridley! These are the most endangered of all the species of sea turtles and they are the only species known to nest in the daylight. They have shared a video of the Kemp's Ridley, as well as the below message they released yesterday after this amazing find. RARE SPECIES OF SEA TURTLE NESTS ON AMELIA ISLAND The Amelia Island Sea Turtle Watch has always been happy to boast of 3 species of sea turtles nesting on the island. For the past 38 years, we have documented Loggerhead, Green and Leatherback Sea turtles nesting here. Today, we added a very rare species to our list of nesters. A very rare Kemp’s Ridley (Lepidochelys Kempi) crawled onto the beach this morning about 9:00 AM. Kemp’s are the only species known to nest in daylight. They are the most endangered of all the species. It is a small turtle with a circular to heart-shaped keeled carapace that in some adults is as wide, or wider, than it is long. Estimates of age at maturity range from 7 to 15 years. Adult Kemp’s are found in the Gulf of Mexico, particularly along the Louisiana coast near the mouth of the Mississippi River and the Campeche, Mexico region. Although Kemp’s Ridleys were often seen in the Gulf of Mexico, the location of their nesting beaches remained a mystery for many years. In 1947, the mystery was solved. A Mexican engineer filmed a mass emergence of tens of thousands of Kemp’s Ridley turtles in broad daylight on a remote beach in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico. The beach was about 200 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. The film showed the feverish activity of the females as they dug their nests and covered them. So many turtles were nesting at once that they climbed over each other and dug up each other’s eggs. This synchronized emergence of nesting females is called an arribada. Wondering why this species nests in arribadas, perhaps wind velocity and direction, lunar cycles, or water temperature my play a role in this event. From the estimated 40,000 nesting females documented in the film from Rancho Nuevo, the population has been reduced to 300 to 350 nesting females per year. In recent decades, population reductions have resulted in the fragmentation of arribadas into small groups or nesting by solitary individuals. The nesting that occurred on Amelia Island may well be one of the solitary individuals along the SE coast. Several other nearby beaches have also reported nesting Kemp’s this season. Because of this rare nesting event on Amelia Island, it is even more important to protect our coastal habitat. Please protect our sea turtle nesting habitat by keeping the beach Clean, Flat, and Dark. -Sabrina Robertson Public Information Officer |
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2024
Categories
All
|