National seashore texas11/13/2023 ![]() ![]() The beach at Rancho Nuevo in Tamaulipas, Mexico, in the 1970s. Watch a YouTube clip of Hererra's 1947 video (note this clip is not a National Park Service video or site). But with the good news came the bad: this species was in serious trouble. The scientists estimated that 40,000 female Kemp's ridley sea turtles had come ashore to nest on that one day on the 16-mile stretch of beach at Rancho Nuevo (Hildebrand 1963).įinally, the mystery was solved and the nesting grounds of the Kemp's ridley became known to the scientific world. There were so many turtles, some even dug up the eggs of others as they laid their own. Thousands of sea turtles were on the beach, digging holes and laying eggs. ![]() Scientists were amazed - nothing like it had ever been seen. That video footage wasn't discovered by the scientific community until the early 1960s, when Dr. Excited, he found a place to land his small plane, got his video camera, and captured the turtles on film. ![]() One summer day in 1947, he looked down as he flew over an area in Mexico called Rancho Nuevo and saw a beach covered with turtles. He was interested in seeing these turtles and started taking a video camera with him on his trips in case he ever saw them. He had heard rumors that hundreds of turtles sometimes crawled up onto one of the beaches he flew over. He had his own small plane and usually flew along the coast. Henry Hildebrand from Corpus Christi, Texas, came upon some home video footage that would solve the mystery and launch an international campaign to save a species.ġ947 film footage taken by Andreas Herrera showed thousands of Kemp's ridley sea turtles nesting on one stretch of beach at Rancho Nuevo, Tamaulipas, Mexico.Īrchitect Andreas Herrera traveled between the U.S. Where did the rest of the turtles nest? Finally, in the early 1960s, Dr. But there were thousands of Kemp's ridley turtles out in the Gulf of Mexico at that time. The turtle was seen nesting in 1948 on what would later be designated as Padre Island National Seashore. In 1951, the first published record of a Kemp's ridley nesting anywhere in the world was submitted by J.E. Scientists searched for the nesting grounds of this sea turtle with no success. If these turtles were a separate species, where did they nest? But when fishermen caught a female Kemp's ridley sea turtles with eggs, the riddle deepened. Some thought it might not even be its own species but an infertile hybrid of two other species. Scientists had studied the nests of other species of sea turtles, but it seemed no one had seen a Kemp's ridley nest. They had seen those turtles lay eggs and the nests hatch. Sailors, explorers, and fishermen had seen other species of sea turtles nesting on various beaches around the world. A female Kemp's ridley sea turtle nesting on Padre Island.įor a long time, the Kemp's ridley was a real mystery. ![]()
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