GALVESTON, Texas, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Biologists who helped save the endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtle from extinction will release the last of them raised in captivity into the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday.
Nearly 25 years ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service began the so-called Headstart Project to save the turtles that were being driven to extinction by fishing and raids on their nesting beaches in Mexico.
The Mexican government acted to protect the beach at Rancho Nuevo from people raiding the nests for eggs and the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring shrimpers to use excluder devices on their nets.
Since 1978, the marine services' sea turtle captive research facility at Galveston has raised and released 24,000 Kemp's Ridley turtles. The turtles are still endangered, but they are well on the way to recovery.
"They definitely have increased their numbers, and they are doing well," fisheries biologist Shanna Baker said Monday.
The Mexican nesting beach remains protected along with a beach they have adopted on Padre Island National Seashore in South Texas. They stay mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, but move up the Atlantic Coast as far as New York during the summer months.
Baker said 25 Kemp's Ridley turtles and two Hawksbill turtles will be released from a Coast Guard vessel Tuesday, probably about 17 miles off shore, as they have been routinely for nearly 25 years.
"We don't plan any special ceremony," she said.
The Headstart program came to an end about 10 years ago and since then the biologists at the Galveston facility have been breeding only enough of the turtles to test turtle excluder devices.
The laboratory is turning its focus now to larger, loggerhead turtles, which can grow to 400 pounds. They are used in tests to ensure the effectiveness of the excluder devices, which are intended to keep turtles out of shrimping nets.
The population of egg-laying female Kemp's Ridley turtles was once only 400, but this year they many number about 10,000, according to Tim Fontaine, chief of the protected species branch at the laboratory.
"It looks like the Kemp's Ridley is on its way back," he told the Galveston Daily News.
Fontaine, who had studied turtles for 40 years, said some species rebound from near extinction but often it depends on whether there is enough public interest to drive the government to action.
Public education has been an important element in the campaign to save the Kemp's Ridley turtle, he said, noting that about 20,000 school children a year tour the Galveston laboratory.
"That's one of the most important things we did -- educate the public," Fontaine told the News. "What we try to tell little kids is 'Yes, you can. You can change it.'"
The Kemp's Ridley turtle grows to about 2-3 feet in length, making it the smallest of the sea turtles. Biologists estimated there may have been as many as 42,000 of them in the 1940s.
