ATLANTIC+RIDLEY

//Lepidochelys kempi// Endangered Although this smallest of the sea turtles occurs from Nova Scotia to Mexico and across to Europe, its only nesting beaches are on the Gulf of Mexico, mainly just north of Tampico. There, in 1947, as many as 40,000 nesting females crowded the beach in a single day. Despite legal protection and military patrols of the beach at nesting times, these numbers have dwindled to sometimes only a few hundred. Nest robbing, and capturing females [|for food] and leather caused much of the decline, and many Atlantic ridley turtles have been accidentally drowned in shrimp trawls. Protective enclosures for egg-hatching and attempts to establish nesting beaches in Texas may help the Atlantic ridley survive.