Runners come out to support sea turtles

Runners got a challenge unique to our community Saturday with the arrival of the 6th annual Ridley Rush, a 1-mile fun run at 8 a.m. through Gladys Porter Zoo.

To mimic the life of a newly hatched Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, runners dealt with predators, trash pollution, ocean currents and other obstacles on their run through the grounds of the Gladys Porter Zoo. The run culminated with each participant receiving a run medal to take home and a ping pong ball representing a sea turtle egg to bury in the sand inside the zoo’s special events hall as a reminder of the circular journey sea turtles will follow for the course of their life.

“They’ve already finished their journey, but we want our runners to help us protect sea turtle eggs. So we ask them to go and bury it in our protective corrals, where our conservation biologist will protect it from predators and poachers,” Cynthia Galvan, the zoo’s Director of Membership & Marketing, said.

Runners do the wave in a series of sea turtle-themed warmups Saturday, July 23, 2022, for the 6th annual Ridley Rush 1-mile fun run at Gladys Porter Zoo. (Denise Cathey/The Brownsville Herald)

Brownsville resident Marylou John, joined by her daughter Samantha, saw the run as an opportunity to help support their community while having quality time together.

“When we saw the run on TV, we said, ‘we have to help the sea turtles,’” exclaimed Marylou.

Racers paid $15 to participate, which covered a race bib, zoo admission and a runners medal. The event also received sponsorship from Brownsville Public Utilities Board, the City of Brownsville, H-E-B and KVEO-TV.

All proceeds from the run benefit the “Binational Mexico/United States Program for the Conservation of the Kemp’s Ridley Turtle” to help protect and grow the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle population.

The program began in 1978, and Gladys Porter Zoo was invited—according to zoo Deputy Director & Chief Operating Officer Colette Adams— to oversee the United State’s portion of the partnership in the early 1980s.

Run medals are laid out on a table at the finish line Saturday, July 23, 2022, for the 6th annual Ridley Rush 1-mile fun run at Gladys Porter Zoo. (Denise Cathey/The Brownsville Herald)

Each year the program runs starting at the earliest arribada— when the sea turtles come in to nest in a large synchronized mass, from March until September. Once they hit the beach, each female will lay around 100 eggs in a flask-shaped nest before covering it with sand.

As part of the program, a staff of around 60 people, split between both countries, work to help study and protect the eggs the sea turtles lay at their nesting sites: Playa Bagdad, Puerto Mezquital, La Pesca, Tepehuajes, Rancho Nuevo, Barra del Tordo, Altamira and Playa Miramar.

Then once the young are ready, they hatch and begin their journey out into the Gulf of Mexico for the cycle to begin again.

Outside of the nesting season, a small portion of the staff stays on to help patrol the beach for any stranded or dead sea turtles.

The program came just a few decades after biologists got an answer to the mystery: where was the natal beach for Kemp’s ridley sea turtles when it came time to lay their eggs? According to Adams, it was only as recently as the 1940s that they found out what locals in the area knew— of thousands of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles appearing on the beaches near Rancho Nuevo in Tamaulipas.

The zoo has a video that resurfaced in the 1960s in Brownsville at a local sportsman’s club, taken by local rancher Andres Herrera in the 1940s, that shows thousands of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles climbing over each other onto the sands of that beach to lay their eggs. The film also captured those same eggs being dug up by people from the local townships—appearing like great mounds of golf balls—to sell as food.

“Even in the 1940s, they observed that and wondered how long you could be doing that. When that film resurfaced in the late 1960s, there were major concerns that they had not seen big nesting conflagrations like that. They didn’t have any historical understanding of how many turtles there were until they saw that film,” Adams said.

For those watching the film, Adams explains, there was already evidence that populations had dropped severely.

‘The fishermen that knew that beach said: ‘there’s not that many turtles left,’” she said.

A little after the program’s start in 1985, Gladys Porter Zoo reported that only 300 females came to nest along the string of beaches in that region of Tamaulipas.

In 2021, the zoo reported that the number was now at 5,000.

“It’s one of the few true conservation success stories, where they were truly on the break of extinction and scientists really believed that we weren’t going to have them anymore. However, because of this binational program, they can protect nesting females on the beach, move and protect their eggs and release their hatched young back into the Gulf of Mexico,” Adams said.