HEART, P.O. Box 681231, Houston, TX 77268-1231
So far this year, 190 Kemp's ridley nests have been confirmed on the Texas coast including (north to south in state): Bolivar Peninsula 5, Galveston Island 6, Brazoria County just north of Surfside 1, Surfside Beach 2, Quintana Beach 1, Bryan Beach 0, Matagorda Peninsula 0, Matagorda Island 13, San Jose Island 4, Mustang Island 5, North Padre Island 102, including 91 at Padre Island National Seashore, South Padre Island 40, Boca Chica Beach 11
The 190 exceeds the previous record of 128 Kemp's ridley nests found in Texas set during 2007. This marks the fifth consecutive year that record numbers of Kemp's ridley nests have been recorded in Texas since record keeping began in 1980. (Anyone who has time to patrol the beaches is asked to watch for hatchlings from previously unknown nest sites. Hatchlings should only be counted; not picked up. Call 866-TURTLE-5 and protect the hatchlings from traffic, people, pets or any predators while they make their way to the water.)
GREEN TURTLE So far this year, 1 green sea turtle nest has been confirmed on the Texas coast at South Padre Island 1
LEATHERBACK TURTLE So far this year, 1 leatherback sea turtle nest has been confirmed on the Texas coast at the Padre Island National Seashore. (This is the first leatherback nest recorded on the Texas coast in 30 years!)
DON'T MISS A HATCHLING RELEASE!
Seeing a release of the most endangered sea turtle is an experience you don't want to miss. Go to http://www.nps.gov/pais/ for information on probable dates of public releases. Then, call 1-361-949-7163 to get up-to-the-minute reports on when and where the hatchlings will be released. Children (and their parents) will never forget the experience.
SEA TURTLE BLOG Mike May, of Houston, has opened SeaturtleBlog.com which is a quick way to check recent happenings in the sea turtle world. Thanks, Mike!
Todd Steiner, Executive Director of Sea Turtle Restoration Project (STRP), emphasized sea turtles' rare genetic lineage and sought global protection for turtles through time and area closures and protection of migration corridors.
Read his complete speech to the United Nations, made on June 30, 2007.
LOG ON TO GOODSEARCH TO HELP THE SEA TURTLES!
Here's a simple way to raise money for the sea turtles! Whenever you need to search, use GoodSearch and select Piney Woods Wildlife Society (PWWS) as your charity. This group has sponsored HEART for 25 years! At the end of the year, GoodSearch will donate money to charities including PWWS and HEART. (You can also select Sea Turtle Restoration Project to help sea turtle conservation work.) Go to www.goodsearch.com to get answers to all your questions.
Another cool way to help HEART and the sea turtles is by checking the shopping information at iGive.com.
You can make donations while shopping on the internet! Give their website a look!
One teacher can make a big difference in the classroom and sea turtle conservation!
John Schaff of Harvard Elementary in the Houston Independent School District is such a teacher. His personal interest in sea turtles inspired numerous children and one young man in particular who was struggling with his writing skills.
This spring, CSTEM, (Communication, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) a non-profit organization in Houston, sponsored a competition which featured the teaching of sea turtle biology, art, literature and robotics.
Students from thirty Houston area schools first studied about sea turtles and then built small robots they used as “hatchlings” for a make-believe race from the beach to the water. They also wrote newsletters, created billboard designs and painted sea turtle sculpture in a three month competition which ended at Texas Southern University in Houston on March 24 with a final competition and the awarding of prizes.
John Schaff immediately recognized this competition as a marvelous combination of educational opportunities for students who learn the plight of sea turtles as they design and build robots, write and paint.
John was a former contract instructor for the Houston Zoo from 1991 to 2001, where he taught classes and helped conduct training for teachers. This experience gave him a great background for the classroom.
“Many of our students were avid readers and had an interest in the plight of sea turtles,” John said later. “We involved the whole school in the following manner: during a testing week all specialist teachers, such as technology instructors, visited classes. I read the story “Little Turtle and the Song of the Sea” by Sheridan Cain. I asked the students from all grade levels to draw sea turtles and their plight. The students in the Robotics Club took pictures of the drawing and inverted the colors with Microsoft paint, giving the drawings a florescent look. These drawings were incorporated into a bulletin board as well as a drawing of a sea turtle eggs.
“The students were quite original in including the work of younger students in the creation of their Bulletin Board”, said Mr. Shaff. “As a group we decided on an “SOS” theme which we integrated into the sculpture, bulletin board, a billboard design, and a newspaper article. We also used the letters of HELP! to identify the main threats to sea turtle: Habitat loss, Exotic predators, Litter (particularly plastic) and Poachers. All students participated in all aspects of the competition.”
One student named Andrew who has writing difficulties and gets frustrated with writing in standardized tests, volunteered to write the most of the article for the newsletter. The other students helped him with editing. He was so proud to learn that the newsletter (Harvard Elementary) had taken first place in the CSTEM competition.
“Andrew, who is an avid reader, but has trouble putting his thoughts into words was inspired by the subject of sea turtles and the help they need to survive,” said John Schaff. “Getting him involved with sea turtles may have opened a door to help him the rest of his academic life.”
Congratulations to Andrew, his teacher and the entire class!
Andrew and his awards
Harvard Elementary students’ billboard design
International Sea Turtle Swimway Proposed in Gulf of Mexico
The world’s top sea turtle experts are calling on both the United States and Mexico to provide more protection for the Kemp’s ridley sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. A resolution passed in Crete in April at the 26th Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation recommends that all relevant governmental agencies work to create a migration and nesting season no commercial fishing zone (marine reserve) in the state waters adjoining North and South Padre Islands, Texas, and a year round no-commercial fishing zone from the Mexican border south to Tampico, creating an international protected Kemp’s Ridley Swimway from Corpus Christi, Texas, south to Tampico, Mexico.
“Some 650 scientists from 64 different countries recognized that the Kemp’s ridley has begun recovering from near extinction and needs much more protection in both U.S. and Mexican waters,” said Carole Allen, Gulf Office Director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project and founder of HEART (Help Endangered Animals-Ridley Sea Turtles).
A second resolution addresses the revision of the 1992 Recovery Plan for the Kemp’s ridley now underway by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service. It recommends that the new recovery plan recognizes and designates the Texas coast as nesting habitat and the adjoining waters as important migratory and foraging habitat. Last year 51 Kemp’s ridley nests were found on the Texas coast. This year 101 nests were found.
Visitors to Texas beaches in the spring and summer months should be alert to the possibility of seeing a nesting sea turtle. All species are either threatened or endangered and protected by federal law. They should immediately call 1-866-TURTLE-5 for more information.
Now or Never for the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtles!
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) are re-writing the Recovery Plan for the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle. These agencies held a very important invitation-only stakeholders meeting in Houston on February 23, 2006.
In a nutshell, FWS and NMFS have not done what was required by their current plan written in 1992. For instance, Kemp’s ridleys and their nesting beaches in Texas were given Priority 1 status calling for patrolling and protection by FWS and NMFS but this has never happened. In 1993 when FWS and NMFS terminated their Kemp’s ridley head start experiment, they said that enough turtles had been raised in captivity so they would focus on learning the fate of head started turtles at sea and whether they survived and nested. Again, these two agencies did little to follow through.
Dr. Donna Shaver of the National Park Service has received some federal funding but has been forced to beg for money from private foundations and build a corps of 200 volunteers to patrol the Padre Island National Seashore where most of the Kemp’s ridley nesting in Texas has occurred. Other Texas beaches are patrolled in a “hit or miss” fashion with no money being allocated for that purpose. Many other nestings may have occurred on Texas beaches where no one was patrolling to record them. Now, it is even more important that the government live up to its original requirements and commitments while updating priorities in their new plan.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 requires development and implementation of recovery plans for the conservation and survival of threatened and endangered species. The first recovery criterion in the current FWS and NMFS Kemp’s ridley recovery plan is to continue complete and active protection of the known nesting habitat and the waters adjacent to the nesting beach, concentrating on the Rancho Nuevo, Tamaulipas, Mexico area, and continuation of the bi-national (Mexico-United States) protection project. The fourth recovery criterion is to successfully implement all Priority 1 recovery tasks which focus on protection and management of nesting and marine habitats, not only in Mexico but also at Padre Island National Seashore (PAIS) near Corpus Christi, Texas, and other nesting beaches in Texas.
In 2006, 102 Kemp’s ridleys nests were found on Texas beaches. Ten Kemp’s ridley nests were found in the Galveston County area. The entire Texas coast must be recognized in the new recovery plan as “known nesting habitat” for the Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.
Steps should be taken by both the federal government and the state of Texas to provide a turtle safe zone all along the Texas coast year around, not just at Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, for migration and feeding of Kemp’s ridleys. These shallow water zones are already known to be important foraging and migratory habitat for Kemp's ridleys.
Funding for the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle has always been difficult. The program has been treated as a “step-child” by FWS, NMFS and various individuals and agencies for unpublicized reasons. If it had not been for the unrelenting lobbying of thousands of school children in the 1980s, the “head start experiment” which has yielded a treasure chest of information about sea turtles would have been cancelled after only three or four years instead of lasting from 1978 to 1993. Conservation organizations such as HEART (Help Endangered Animals-Ridley Turtles), private foundations and individuals kept the Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, turtle camp afloat until the shrimp industry decided to support it looking for a way to escape using Turtle Excluder Devices by claiming there are abundant numbers of Kemp’s ridleys in the Gulf of Mexico.
The new recovery plan for the Kemp’s ridley sea turtles must comply with the priorities listed in the 1992 document and make updated changes to support and enhance the increase in nesters on Texas beaches. We recognize that the species has been given a minimum of attention in the budgets of FWS and NMFS since the recovery plan was adopted in 1992; however, the determination of the supporting public now demands that changes be made in the new recovery plan to provide for protection, patrolling and research for the Kemp’s ridley in Texas waters and adjoining beaches.
A draft recovery plan will be released in 2007. Please watch our website for further details.
An Ill Wind Might Help the Shrimp Industry!
October 07, 2005 — By Carole H. Allen, Sea Turtle Restoration Project - Texas
When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, many thought they were witnessing the “ill wind that blows nobody good.” Property damage will be in the billions and the toll in human suffering can never be measured. How could a silver lining be found in this dark summer of tragedy for anyone in the hurricane-struck areas, much less the shrimping industry?
Already reeling from imports of cheap shrimp, rising fuel costs, the “dead zone” in the Gulf, and serious by catch and over fishing issues, the industry suffered hurricane damage to boats and processing plants. Breeding areas are polluted and a NOAA research vessel is currently testing to see if shrimp caught from the Gulf area is even safe to eat. The state of Louisiana has a shocking internet advisory on contaminants that was available prior to the hurricane with its uncontrolled release of more chemicals, sewage and other dangerous runoff. The advisory states that “in a few Louisiana waters, fish and shellfish have chemical contamination in amounts that may be harmful to your health if you were to eat too much over a long period of time.”
So where is any silver lining for a 20th century industry struggling against great odds? It is suggested by a term used by U. S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez after Katrina hit Louisiana. He announced the formal determination of a “fishery failure” in the Gulf of Mexico and made federal relief funds available through the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to restore fisheries, assist fishing communities and provide direct assistance to fishermen. Herein lies a silver lining and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the government, the shrimp industry, recreational fishermen and taxpayers.
It is no secret that shrimp fishing has evolved into a less than desirable career and certainly much less lucrative than in years past. The state of Texas has taken action to reduce its shrimp fleet by buying out shrimping licenses and setting up appropriate restrictions and closures to deal with over fishing and by catch of recreational fish. According to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the total economic impact of Texas commercial shrimping is reported at $300 million while the economic impact of recreational saltwater angling is $1.3 billion!
NOAA now has a rare opportunity to help struggling shrimp fishermen while shoring up marine resources. Instead of using the Magnuson-Stevens millions to buy new shrimp boats, why not re-train fishermen and allow them to find jobs that would offer security for them and their families?
Monies earmarked to translate information into Vietnamese could be used to teach them how to speak English so they can enter the job force in other fields and be competitive.
Even endangered sea turtles would benefit from a reduction of the shrimp fleet in the Gulf of Mexico. Some shrimp fishermen say that storm debris backs up inside the Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) and prevents shrimp from piling up in the bag. The TED was designed to allow sea turtles to escape from trawls, but as a result of the storms, Dr. William Hogarth, Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries, announced the suspension of the use of TEDs in some areas of the Gulf. He expects shrimp boat captains to use a 55 minute tow so that trapped turtles can be released before they drown. Since the Coast Guard is working overtime doing hurricane rescue, law enforcement will be scant and the 55 minute tow is virtually unenforceable.
NOAA Fisheries and the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council have a rare chance to do a big favor for bankrupt shrimp fishermen. Give them an option to change their vocations and then re-train them to enter other fields. Cutting the number of shrimp boats in the Gulf of Mexico would reduce by catch and over fishing and help save sea turtles from extinction. Now is the time.Carole H. Allen is the Gulf Office Director of Sea Turtle Restoration Project-TEXAS located in Houston, Texas. This commentary also appeared in the Galveston County (Texas) Daily News and the Evironmental News Network website.
WE NEED YOU AS A CHARTER MEMBER OF SEA TURTLE RESTORATION PROJECT-TEXAS!
The sea turtles of Texas need a strong voice! Members of STRP-TEXAS can be that voice!
As a charter member of STRP-TEXAS, you will also be helping pay operational costs of the Gulf Office, to advocate an expanded marine reserve at the Padre Island National Seashore, to advance the idea of a new nesting colony at Galveston, and to continue educating the public and getting more people involved through activities and educational presentations.
For a $25 tax-deductible donation, you will receive a great newsletter and updates on Texas projects as well as my thanks. ($10 for seniors and students) You will also join a worldwide team of people working for sea turtle conservation -from the high seas to the beaches of Central America and to the conferences of the United Nations.
To become a charter member, send your check today payable to STRP-TEXAS to P.O. Box 681231, Houston, Texas 77268-1231 with your name, address and URL.
STUDENTS CAN HELP SEA TURTLES!
Organize a Texas Turtle Tracker club!
Students learn about sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico, form a club to track sea turtles, if near the coast, or help them no matter where the school is located. (The design on the club T-shirt is shown above.)
Funds raised support the Padre Island National Seashore sea turtle program, rehabilitation of injured sea turtles, satellite tracking of Kemp’s ridleys by Texas A&M University at Galveston and the Gulf Office of Sea Turtle Restoration Project. Raise $100 and receive five student T-shirts, one teacher shirt, a Certificate of Achievement, featured mention on the Sea Turtle Restoration/HEART (Help Endangered Animals-Ridley Turtles) websites and membership in the Texas Sea Turtle Teacher Network!
JOIN US IN THE FIGHT FOR THE LEATHERBACK SEA TURTLE!
- Update! Bill Needs Food!
If you would like to contribute to Barnacle Bill's food fund, just make your check out to HEART marking it for Barnacle Bill in memo space and send to P.O box 681231, Houston, Texas 77268-1231.
Sea Turtles in the Classroom
If sea turtles are to exist and bio-diversity to be maintained, it will be thanks to many teachers at all grade levels who emphasize the need for awareness and conservation of wildlife and all natural resources. We are pleased to present the first of a series of sea turtle lesson plans which have been used successfully in classrooms. If you have a lesson plan you would like to share, please contact carole@seaturtles.org.
New PowerPoint Slideshow available for download for classroom use. This show was developed for Aldine ISD, Texas, middle school science teachers. See their Life Science Benchmarks (Microsoft Excel).
Tips for TEKS-TAKS and Texas Sea Turtles
2nd Grade Curriculum
Anne Wallace and Patricia Khamou, second grade teachers at Harris Academy in Houston, Texas, make conservation of the Kemp,s ridley sea turtle a marvelous learning experience for their second grade classes.
Harris Academy in the Aldine Independent School District concentrates on Citizenship, Leadership and Foreign Language and saving the Kemp,s ridley fits very well. The topic of the curriculum is entitled Citizens Unite! Teachers may use the Problem-based Learning Outline, the script of the City Council meeting or look at the photographs showing the class and their projects.
Middle School Curriculum(Including TAKS Information)
California middle school teacher Pat Masters shares his Kemp's Ridley curriculum, including information for Texas teachers. Check out the photos of Barnacle Bill and Tony Amos who are described in the curriculum. 1, 2, 3.
More good ideas from Dunbar Middle School, Dickinson, Texas!
Houston students at Crockett Elementary learn about sea turtles and the marine environment. Dr Jean Rivera shows her students' posters.
HEART (Help Endangered Animals-Ridley Turtles) was organized in 1982 to save the Kemp's ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempi) from extinction by educating the public and supporting conservation laws that protect sea turtles. HEART serves as an educational referral source for teachers andstudents seeking information about the Kemp's ridleys and all sea turtles. A grass-roots all-volunteer organization, HEART strives to inform the public of breaking news about Kemp's ridleys and the challenges facing their survival. The organization merged with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project effective August 1, 2002 .
HEART and the Sea Turtle Restoration Project are 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations. Carole Allen is the Gulf Office Director HEART (carole@seaturtles.org). The website is provided by SurfXpress.
Web Page Volunteer - STEVEN STONES
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Last Updated 6-5-08
