off to the coast

I'm off to go to Padre Island National Seashore which is on North Padre Island to report on Kemp's ridley sea turtles. North Padre Island is the longest remaining stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world, and it's (amazingly enough) along the Texas coast.

Kemp's are a fascinating sea turtle as they are the most critically endangered of the 7 sea turtle species but have started to recover due to a program in the 1990s. They nest in arribadas where thousands of them used to come ashore all in the same night. I saw an old movie of it and they would just climb all over one another in huge heaps and turtle eggs were getting dug up from other nests and it was craziness. Well now there aren't that many but they still come ashore around the same time. So there's no telling if I'll see one, but I should see the hatchlings.

I've never been to North Padre Island -though I have been to South Padre Island, many times, which is where all the college kids go to party. This is 150 miles north of that, sort of near Corpus Christi. I am looking forward to it. I love the ocean and the beach. It is like home.