videos

Videos - 1947 Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle Nesting

The Kemp's ridley has experienced a historical, dramatic decrease in arribada size. An amateur video from 1947 documented an extraordinary Kemp's ridley arribada near Rancho Nuevo. It has been estimated that approximately 42,000 Kemp's ridleys nested during that single day! The video also provided evidence of Kemp's ridley egg collection. Dozens of villagers are seen on the beach excavating the nests and subsequent interviews have suggested that 80% of the nests, about 33,000, were collected and transported to local villages (Hildebrand, 1963).

This video has also served to measure the species' collapse. Twenty years after the video was filmed, the largest arribada measured was just 5,000 individuals. Between the years of 1978 and 1991 only 200 Kemp's ridleys nested annually. Today the Kemp's ridley population appears to be in the early stages of recovery. Nesting has increased steadily over the past decade. During the 2000 nesting season, an estimated 2,000 females nested at Rancho Nuevo, a single arribada of 1,000 turtles was reported in 2001, and an estimated 3,600 turtles produced over 8,000 nests in 2003. In 2006, a record number of nests were recorded since monitoring began in 1978; 12,143 nests were documented in Mexico, with 7,866 of those at Rancho Nuevo.

Thanks to NOAA for the text