[waves lapping against the seashore]
[Hawaiian music]
- LARRY MCKINNEY: The Kemp's Ridleys,
this is a species that was nearing an extinction event.
By 1985, there were maybe three or 400 of these things left.
- DONNA SHAVER: This species almost went extinct within the
blink of an eye and we know it was human activities
that caused the decline without question.
- MIKE RAY: They're the smallest of the sea turtles.
They're only found in a very small part of the world.
It doesn't take a lot of human interaction
to probably destroy it.
[Hawaiian music]
- The Kemp's Ridleys binational program to recover
this endangered species is probably one of the most
successful I've been, participated with.
And, it's one of the most involved and difficult.
I mean in 1947 or so, there were 120,000 of these turtles
that would come ashore and nest,
many of them, 30 or 40,000 at a time.
And this program basically saved that specie's life.
[rolling waves]
- DONNA: For many years, it wasn't known where
Kemp's Ridleys nest.
It was a mystery.
It wasn't until 1960s, Dr. Henry Hildebrandt
discovered a film that was
shot by a Mexican engineer that showed an
estimated 40,000 Kemp's Ridleys females
nesting on this small stretch of beach near the village of
Rancho Nuevo in Tamaulipas, Mexico.
When biologist began to go to the beach however,
they found that the number of turtles nesting
had declined tremendously.
- What you have to understand too, well, like in,
particularly in the along the nesting beaches,
it's a pretty poor area.
They could get a dollar an egg
and then the turtles themselves could feed the family
for a week.
It was pretty important.
And, trying to get people to want to conserve and not consume
was a major undertaking.
There was a lot of years where not much survived
that came on the beach.
- DONNA: The decline was so precipitous that in the 1970s,
they came up with a concept of forming
a secondary nesting colony of Kemp's Ridleys turtles
at Padre Island National Seashore
so that if a political or environmental catastrophe
was to occur at that main nesting beach down in Mexico,
there would be a safe are in the U.S. where Kemp's Ridleys
could nest and be protected.
[airplane landing]
It started small as a concept in the 1970s
where we received eggs, 22,507 eggs from Mexico.
We had the first confirmed returnee from this project,
I saw here in 1996, 10 years after we began our
first patrols looking for returns from that project.
- MAN: Okay, there's the egg cavity,
with the eggs.
- GIRL: She said there's about 100.
- MIKE: One thing we found out years and years ago,
from the years we started stocking or releasing
at least 100,000 hatchlings a year,
you could start to see the population build.
So, in the years we were getting up to like a million or close,
I mean we know we had some giant, giant impacts then.
- LARRY: What accelerated the recovery of this species
more than anything else,
all the science we did,
all the volunteers we have had,
have had a positive impact,
but this one thing has done more
to recover Kemp's Ridleys sea turtles than anything else,
and that's Viagra.
They used to say a turtle egg and a shot of tequila
and I'm ready to go.
I mean that was, that was what was reality.
And, to the point where there was a time when they actually
backed up 18-wheeled tractor trailers
into the edge of the dunes
and were loading turtle eggs on them as fast as
they collect them.
That's really what, that's really what almost destroyed
over that period of time almost destroyed them.
And so, they literally put out posters with women in lingerie
holding a Viagra pill and a turtle egg
and saying this will do more than this,
but it apparently worked because all of a sudden
all of our efforts down in Mexico with our partners
there to save eggs, they started bearing fruit.
[crowd cheering]
- Today we're here at Padre Island National Seashore.
We have a large group of people here today.
All excited to come out and support the sea turtles
and see their return back into the Gulf.
You can take a picture.
- SPECTATOR: All right, smile.
- Thank you.
- He's so cute.
- He's even tinier than you are.
- Awww, he's so cute.
- HILARY: He is really cute.
- They're probably like babies.
- They are little babies.
They're only a couple hours old.
- DONNA: The public has always been involved in,
to some extent, in our releases of Kemp's Ridleys hatchlings
at Padre Island National Seashore.
With the advent of social media, then the message is spread
and our attendance at these releases really shot up.
So now, it's typically hundreds to more than 1,000 people.
We hold about, about 20 public releases each year,
sometimes more than that,
sometimes a little less,
it all depends on the schedule of the turtles.
- No, those are turtles.
[crowd chatter]
- HILARY: When I see the baby sea turtles,
they're just the culmination of everything we've done this year.
That is our success story,
that we were able to protect them from eggs
into developing hatchlings.
And, once they hit the water and go back to the Gulf of Mexico,
it just warms my heart, and you hear a great cheer come up
from the audience
and it's a really cool thing to be a part of.
[crowd cheering]
- DONNA: That's it!
[laughs]
We're really thrilled because great strides have been made,
the numbers nesting here have increased dramatically,
but we haven't won the game, so to speak.
It's going to take more years of effort
to fully recover the species.
[waves lapping]
- LARRY: This last 40 years has frankly been remarkable.
When you think back in 1985,
there were literally 300 of these animals
possibly left alive,
and now, I think it was 2011 about this time of year,
uh, almost 4,000 Kemp's Ridleys turtles came up on the beach.
That was the first time that had happened since 1947,
so to go from almost gone
to on the road to recovery is remarkable.
I, I don't know any other species we've done that for
anywhere in this country.