Padre sea turtle may be in danger

[TexasStooge]

Experts fear beach restoration may harm Kemp's ridley eggs

By LYNN BREZOSKY / Associated Press

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas (DallasNews.com/AP) – On a gray and wind-whipped spring day comes the excited call: The year's first clutch of eggs from the endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle has just been found.

Within minutes, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service interns are out on all-terrain vehicles, eyes peeled for smeary trails of flipper prints leading from surf through sand to nest.

Each year, biologists collect and guard Kemp's ridley eggs, a "head start" project that culminates in late summer when thousands of baby turtles scamper to sea. Without biologists' intervention, only a few would survive.

This year, biologists fear nesting season could be endangered by a project to restore beach eroded by tides and the vicious 2005 hurricane season.

The city hopes to begin a restoration project this month or in June, which would mean vehicles moving over nesting grounds, sand possibly dumped over eggs or new sand in the surf obscuring turtles' ability to find their nesting spots.

"Probably from a sea turtle standpoint, it's the worst two months of the year to do it," said Jeff George, curator of Sea Turtle Inc., South Padre's hospital for injured sea turtles and a partner with Fish and Wildlife in rescuing turtle eggs.

Bad timing

Fish and Wildlife biologist Jody Mays and other turtle experts agreed these are the worst two months.

"But I don't want to be a tree hugger and say we can't do it," he said. "We can help put patrols out there and protect the nests. At the same token, you also have to say, why do you have to do it in May or June?"

Without major disturbances, this year promises to be a good one for nest finds. At least 25 had been discovered on Texas beaches this week, compared with five for the same period last year. By the end of April 26, the first day of the protection project, 10 nests had been found. They were moved to a protected area, where they will be monitored for the 48- to 62-day incubation period.

Once born, the turtles spend their lives at sea, with only females coming on shore again to nest on the beach where they were hatched.

Dave Cromwell, a tour guide with Sea Turtle Inc. said the turtles are born with material in their brains that imprints the location where they hatch and cross the sand. They will come back within about a mile of the spot, he said.

The vast majority of Kemp's ridleys nest on a beach in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, just south of Texas.

A home movie from 1947 shows about 40,000 nesting at once. But the population has diminished dramatically because the eggs were harvested for food or shrimp trawls and gill nets trapped and drowned the turtles.

Beaches along South Padre Island and North Padre Island have been occasional nesting spots, and biologists hope their efforts to protect them will bring more nesting females.

The beach on the north end of town, where South Padre's strip of hotels and high-rise condominiums peters out, has been eroding for many years, said Don Hockaday of the University of Texas-Pan American coastal studies lab.

Hurricane damage

The town usually keeps on top of the problem by using spoils from dredgings of the ship channel leading up to the nearby Port of Brownsville. But in January it became clear that Katrina, Rita and other storms from the 2005 Gulf of Mexico hurricane season had dragged so much sand into the channel that ships were in danger of grounding.

The port took most of its annual dredging budget to remedy that problem, and the scooped sand was dumped into the sea.

Unfortunately, South Padre officials realized, the winter tides had been particularly hard on the island and they could have used the sand. Long-forgotten retaining walls were re-emerging and dune markers that used to be 2 feet higher than the beach are now 5 feet higher.

"Right now we need sand," said South Padre Island planner Catherine Ball of the project's urgency. "The erosion is not only taking dunes, it's lowering the elevation of the beach."

Erosion harm

If not alleviated soon, Ms. Ball said, the erosion could harm hotels and other properties.

The schedule for the next port dredging, which would have begun in early fall, depends on what happens with the federal budget for 2007.

With that sand in limbo and properties threatened, the town has identified another source of sand and has applied for a turtle variance, which would allow work during turtle nesting season, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Ms. Ball said.

She said the town was prepared to hire people to scope out turtle eggs.

"It's really rewarding when you find them, and you watch them, and then you see your babies go out to sea," Ms. Mays said.