Some quick-thinking county employees this week helped boost the state's population of endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles. Employees of Calhoun County found a nest of newly-hatched turtles on Magnolia Beach near Port Lavaca and helped them safely make it to the Gulf of Mexico.
The maintenance and sanitation crew was performing cleanup along the beach early in the morning when they spotted dozens of baby turtles.
"A couple of the guys started seeing some of the little sea turtle hatchlings walking around and they noticed that a few of them were walking the wrong way, and they were going to walk towards the road," said Calhoun County Marine Extension Agent RJ Shelly.
Baby turtles only have about a 45% chance of making it safely to the water without help. They've been endangered for decades. In addition to threats from natural predators, they're in danger of being run over by cars. The maintenance crew, Shelly said, did the right thing by guiding them to the Gulf of Mexico.
"They did an excellent job. They stopped about 25 of them from going out on the road before I even got there...and then they got them down near the water's edge and watched them go into the water."
The crew notified their supervisor, Calhoun County Precinct 1 Commissioner David Hall, who notified Shelly.
"After I got there, I sat on that nest for the next four hours until the rest of them hatched out and we made sure that they got into the water," Shelly said. He also consulted with sea turtle biologist Pamela Plotkin, director of Texas Sea Grant and sea turtle biologist. She confirmed they were Kemp's ridley sea turtles. They are the most endangered sea turtles in the world and lay their eggs in the sands of beaches along the Gulf of Mexico.
"Sea turtles typically nest on barrier island beaches in Texas, and so seeing a turtle nest on a beach inside any bay is rare," Plotkin said. "This has never happened in modern times."
Shelly says he's glad they were able to point the baby turtles in the right direction and help them reach the water safely.
"If the little hatchlings would have tried to make the run down the beach, probably a few of them would have gotten carried off by seagulls. The biggest concern was the proximity of the roadway," he said. "We knew that they were an endangered species, and the basic goal of the day was to get them into the water."
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