Kemp's Ridley

The Kemp's ridley (Lepidochelys kempii) is the smallest sea turtle species in the world and is classified as Critically Endangered (CR) by the IUCN, making it the most imperiled of all marine turtles. Adults typically reach 60 to 70 centimeters in carapace length and weigh around 35 to 45 kilograms, with a nearly circular, olive-grey to grey-green shell and a pale yellowish plastron. Unlike most sea turtles, Kemp's ridleys are famous for their synchronized daytime nesting behavior known as the 'arribada,' in which females emerge in large groups to lay eggs, almost exclusively along the beaches of Rancho Nuevo in Tamaulipas, Mexico, with smaller nesting also recorded in Texas.

Outside the nesting season, the species ranges throughout the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast of North America, favoring shallow, nearshore waters with sandy or muddy bottoms rich in crabs, their preferred prey, particularly blue crabs. Juveniles often use sargassum mats as nursery habitat before moving into coastal feeding grounds. The species experienced a catastrophic population collapse in the mid-20th century, falling from tens of thousands of nesting females to only a few hundred by the 1980s.

Intensive binational conservation efforts since then, including beach protection, egg relocation programs, and turtle excluder devices in shrimp trawls, helped the population rebound substantially into the 2000s, representing one of the most celebrated recoveries in sea turtle conservation history, even though numbers have since fluctuated and population trend is currently considered unknown. Continued protection of nesting beaches and foraging habitat remains essential to securing the species' long-term survival.

Kemp's ridleys inhabit shallow coastal and estuarine waters of the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic, foraging over sandy and muddy bottoms rich in crabs, while nesting almost exclusively on a narrow stretch of beach near Rancho Nuevo, Mexico.