Attempts to Move Se Turtle Eggs Out of Gulf Oil Spill Proving Fruitful

Hawksbill turtle

We have all heard of the BP oil spill fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico. As the black goo made its way to the beaches of Alabama and Florida officials of those states began an effort to attempt to save the batch of sea turtles.

Their plan was to dig up thousands of the turtle eggs and then move them over to the Kennedy Space Center, so that they could be born in an oil free environment. As we know, not many sea turtles actually make it in the wild, they didn’t need the extra obstacle of coming into the world in an oil slick.

If even a few of these turtles survived, officials commented, it would be considered a grand success.

Based on the first raw data coming in, “it’s been more of a success than we thought it would be,” a spokesman for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Chuck Underwood, commented this past Friday.

Of the thousands – somewhere over 25,000 – of eggs moved, 14,676 were hatched successfully and were then let go in the Atlantic Ocean. This means that over half of the turtle eggs which were moved actually hatched, and nearly 6 out of every 10 turtles made it into the black goo free water.

“We do feel it was a success that we got that number of hatchlings into the sea,” commented a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Patricia Behnke. “Of course, what happens to them after that, we don’t know. But we never do.”