CORPUS CHRISTI - Fourteen of 108 eggs deposited in May by a female Kemp's ridley sea turtle did not hatch, providing scientists with research tissue to help examine the long-term impacts of a major oil spill on the world's most endangered sea turtle.
The 94 hatchlings that survived from that spring clutch were released early Thursday before a watchful crowd at Padre Island National Seashore into a Gulf of Mexico that may or may not be more perilous in the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.
The national seashore and Donna Shaver, chief of the Sea Turtle Science and Recovery Division at the park, are at the center of a three-year gulfwide study that could help determine the amount of monetary damages owed by companies responsible for the April 2010 explosion off the coast of Louisiana. The breach released about 5 million barrels of crude.
About 100 scientists and researchers from nearly 20 agencies, departments, bureaus and organizations from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida are involved in the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment. Next comes the recovery phase.
Texas' role in the assessment of the effects of the spill on the Gulf ecosystem is a vital component of the effort because of the Kemp's ridley recovery program, said Tom Harvey, with the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. The effort represents the most comprehensive natural resource damage assessment of the largest oil spill in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Department of Interior.
The national seashore annually attracts the largest number of Kemp's ridley nests in the United States, making it an ideal location for the study, Shaver said. Shaver and her team have collected tissue samples from sea turtles for more than 20 years as part of an effort to establish and protect a secondary nesting colony on the national seashore.
Information from those samples will be compared with data collected immediately after the spill and since. Results from the $1 million three-year Texas study could take years to analyze, said Jim Haas, chief of the Resource Protection Branch of the National Park Service.
Research on birds and marine life will involve extensive chemical and toxicology analysis to look for evidence of exposure to toxic elements of oil that can be traced to the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Shaver said she has seen no obvious evidence of harm in turtles here since the spill. Some evidence could be buried in the tissue or DNA of turtles, which could result in genetic abnormalities in offspring or other reproductive problems, biologists said.
"It's too early to tell," she said.
Possible DNA damage has been detected in Florida Gulf sturgeon that were exposed to the spill, said Nancy Regalado, media and public outreach coordinator for the Department of Interior.
There have been 205 Kemp's ridley nests found along the Texas this year, including 105 at the national seashore, setting a record for the nesting season, which ends in early August. The turtle's primary nesting beach is in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico.
About 1,150 sea turtles were collected in the spill area within the first six months. Of the more than 600 turtles found dead, nearly 500 were Kemp's ridleys, according to Tom Shearer, with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
The range of adult Kemp's includes most of the Gulf. So it is reasonable to assume some of the turtles found after the spill may have had connection to the Texas population, Harvey said.
Part of the ongoing research involves an extensive tagging program to track the movements and migratory habits of Kemp's ridleys. In Texas, much of this work is being conducted along the upper coast, Shaver said.
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