Kemp's Ridleys are the most endangered sea turtle on the planet... can they lose their nickname of the "heartbreak turtle"? Today, we go on a journey to the remote Chandeleur islands to try to find the mysterious Kemp’s Ridley turtles, who, after 75 years, have been discovered on the shores of Louisiana. It’s a story of loss and restoration, of hope and heartbreak.
Hosted by Sea Change managing producer Carlyle Calhoun. Editing help by Nora Saks, Garrett Hazelwood, and Halle Parker. Our sound designer is Maddie Zampanti. Sea Change is a production of WWNO and WRKF. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX.
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TRANSCRIPT
Ambient bugs
CARLYLE: It’s 6 in the morning, and I’m standing next to a short tarmac runway in Belle Chasse, Louisiana …just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans.
Todd: It's a pretty grueling flight. So most people that we brought up get sick. If you get sick, just just use the bag and we're good to go.
That’s Todd Baker. He and Matt Weigel are the two state biologists I’ve been talking to for months… begging them to take me with them to the most remote corner of Louisiana. They fly there weekly, as part of their job to help save a rapidly disappearing coast, but very few others have ever been. Todd is prepping me for the flight.
Todd: well, we're going to the Chandler Islands, which is about 22 miles south of Gulfport, Mississippi, as the crow flies or as the seaplane flies.
CARLYLE: The Chandeleurs. I have heard about these isolated islands for years. And always in almost mystical terms. The crescent-shaped string of islands loosely hugging the toe of Louisiana's boot, aren’t easy to get to. You either need hours across the open Gulf by boat, or if you’re lucky like I am today, by seaplane. So despite the apparently high probability I’m about to need a barf bag, I am feeling very lucky.
Todd: it was set aside primarily for birds, and you're going to see plenty of those today, too.
CARLYLE: The Chandeleurs are a globally important bird habitat, and I’m hoping I’ll get to see some of the rare birds that nest here, like the small piping plovers or the bright yellow-beaked least terns.
But the real reason I’m heading out to these barrier islands is in the hopes of seeing an even rarer creature. One that hadn’t been seen anywhere on the shores of Louisiana in over 75 years. Until last summer. Here's Matt.
Matt: Last year, last year was a, you know, a surprise for a lot of folks.
CARLYLE: Including for Matt and Todd...the ones who actually made the shocking discovery.
And I'm hoping today may be another lucky day. We load up the Kodiak 100 amphibious plane with gear.
Ambient seaplane taking off
and take off, following the Mississippi River south and then we are over the wide open Gulf of Mexico–a blue expanse only interrupted by small square oil platforms peppering the sea below. Finally I see an island on the horizon. The Chandeleurs. Our pilot Michael slows the plane, and we descend until we are flying low and slow. We are all scanning the beach. Looking. Hoping. Then Todd sees something. What looks like tire tracks across the sand below.
Todd: Alright, Carlyle, you just got lucky as hell.
I’m Carlyle Calhoun, and you’re listening to Sea Change.
Those weren’t actual tire tracks we saw from the plane. Vehicles aren’t allowed on the wilderness protected Chandeleur islands even if they could get there. They are actually a sign of a mysterious sea creature, the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle. Not only is this species extremely rare, it’s also the most endangered sea turtle in the entire world.
Kemp’s were named after a Key West naturalist who helped discover the turtle back in 1906. In recent decades though, it’s earned another nickname - The Heartbreak Turtle. Because every time its population starts to rebound, some other devastating threat appears. But now, there may be hope that this time will be different. That our hearts won’t once again be broken.
Sea Change theme music
I’m hoping to see a Kemp’s up close on the island. But first I want to talk to someone who has seen a lot of them, to help me understand these rare turtles.
Donna: Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle hatchlings start out as a black to charcoal gray color; they're about the size of a silver dollar.
CARLYLE: This is Dr. Donna Shaver. The world’s top Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle expert. She’s in her early 60s with long blond hair. She looks like she was meant to spend her life on the beach.
Donna: As these little hatchlings, swim away from the shoreline. They swim vigorously for the first few days of life through the swim frenzy.
Carlyle: The babies then drift with the currents snacking on seaweed and crabs.
Donna: when they reach about yearlings, they start to get this gray, olive green coloring on top. Then when they reach adulthood at about two and a half feet long, they're the smallest and the lightest of the sea turtles, They're beautiful. They're beautiful at every size.
Carlyle: All sea turtles are endangered, but Kemp’s Ridleys are by far the most at risk…and the most mysterious. At least they are to us humans trying to understand a creature that has been on this earth for millions of years. Kemp’s mostly live in the Gulf of Mexico, but when the young go exploring, they can also be seen paddling along the east coast, as far north as Nova Scotia. A few have even been seen in Europe.
Way before Matt and Todd saw a Kemps on the Chandeleurs, before Kemp’s Ridleys were nicknamed “the heartbreak turtle,” before they were listed as an endangered species, before there was even an Endangered Species Act, there were a lot of Kemps. But still, very little was known about them. Many didn’t even think it was a distinct species.
While people had seen plenty of other sea turtle species nesting, the same wasn’t true for Kemp’s. These turtles had scientists totally baffled. And there was one big question everyone was asking: where were these mysterious little turtles coming from? Where were their nests?
There was this scientist Archie Carr. And if anyone was going to get to the bottom of this question, it was the guy known as Turtle Man. He was obsessed with solving what he called "the riddle of the Ridley."
Donna: When Archie Carr was doing his work, the species was very poorly known and some hypothesized it might even be a hybrid. They didn't know where the main nesting beach was located.
Carlyle: Carr spent 2 decades searching the Caribbean far and wide for where Kemp’s were nesting, but even Turtle Man couldn’t solve the riddle..It wasn't until the 60's the at another scientist found this old film shot decades before in Mexico.
The film shows tens of thousands of momma Kemp's ridley sea turtles. … a solid mile of them, crawling up the beach and nesting. It was the most turtle eggs scientists had ever seen in one place. They concluded this must be it – the main nesting beach Turtle Man had been searching for… where the vast majority of baby Kemp’s were born. And, all this was happening on this one beach on the eastern coast of Mexico. This place called Rancho Nuevo.
…So one mystery was solved.
But there was something else the film showed. This incredible and unique way Kemp’s nest.
Donna: They tend to nest in these synchronous emergences at the same time. Called Arribadas
CARLYLE: Arribadas. Spanish for “arrival”. Meaning the arrival of a mass synchronized nesting. You see, the reason that old film was able to show 40,000 turtles on one day on one beach is because Ridleys, unlike other sea turtles, often nest together as a big group. The momma turtles begin gathering offshore and then swim into the beach all together to lay their eggs. We still don't know why they do this. Another one of their mysteries. It's thought that perhaps because Kemps are so small, it's a safety in numbers kind of thing.
But here’s the problem, while scientists were amazed to learn about the Arribadas, there was another group of people who were equally interested in the Kemp’s nesting behavior…but for a very different reason. Donna says in that old film -
Donna: you could see nest after nest being poached and the eggs taken and mounted up so that they could be carted off and then sold as a supposed aphrodisiac.
Carlyle: Turns out…all this synchronicity also made these turtles super vulnerable to a human threat: POACHERS. And they were stealing Kemp’s eggs by the truck-full. Because Kemp’s lay their eggs at the same time, poachers don't have to sit around waiting for the occasional lone nesting female before stealing her hundred or so eggs...instead, a fortune arrives in a day.
Donna: when biologists in Mexico started learning about that nesting beach, they sent armed marines there to protect the nesting turtles and the eggs. They took it very seriously.
Carlyle: The Mexican forces were ordered to shoot first and ask questions later if poaching was suspected. But turtle numbers continued to freefall. Thanks to poachers stealing babies and dying after getting tangled in fishing gear, Kemp’s were declared an endangered species in 1970.
Donna: This species was almost driven to extinction. In one human generation. The population plummeted, just exponentially plummeted. And we were so close to losing them entirely.
Carlyle: By 1985, there were only 250 mature female turtles left on the planet.
The world’s smallest sea turtle was circling the drain. Scientists knew more had to be done for this species to survive.
Donna: It was a conservation emergency, and this was an experimental effort. Nobody knew if it would work.
Carlyle: American scientists decided they would join forces with their Mexican colleagues to try to save this beloved sea turtle. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and these scientists decided to try something that had never been tried: start a new nesting colony elsewhere. Somewhere safe from the poachers. But how could they do it and where?
Enter budding young scientist, Donna Shaver.
At the moment Kemp’s Ridleys almost disappeared forever, Donna found her calling.
Donna: I decided right then I was gonna dedicate my career to trying to help save the Kemps Ridley turtles.
Carlyle: Her PHD advisor said it was a foolish move. That Kemp’s were doomed. But she believed something that almost no one else believed in. That the tiniest sea turtles could be saved from extinction.
Donna: And I knew it would require sacrifices. I knew. That it would mean I couldn't have the normal kind of life where you go out to lunch with the ladies, you go get your hair done at the hairdresser, you have children. I wasn't able to do all that.
Carlyle: Instead, since 1980, Donna’s life’s work has been trying to start a new colony of Kemp’s. And the spot that was chosen for this experiment was Padre Island National Seashore in TEXAS. Because while Rancho Nuevo, Mexico was the mothership for nesting Kemps, it wasn’t the ONLY nesting site. There were scattered nests on other beaches in the Gulf, from Florida to Texas.
Beaches and sea turtles are deeply connected. And the specific beach where a sea turtle is born is particularly important.
Donna: it's known much better now but it was thought then that turtles go back to the beach where they were born to lay their own eggs.
But scientists didn’t know exactly how - or what the mechanism was.
Donna: Now we know that there's navigation in relation to the Earth's magnetic field and that may be important in bringing them back. But, at that time we didn't know, so we tried to hedge our bets.
Carlyle: If you spend any time with scientists talking about sea turtles, they use this word a lot: imprinting. The full name for it is geomagnetic imprinting. Sea turtles' first memories are imprinted with a magnetic map of the sandy beach where they are born. (Like a GPS for turtles) Then more than a decade later, females access their stored map to navigate through the ocean back home, to have their own babies. I mean how amazing is that??
So how could this experiment work? If all these baby Kemp's turtles are hard-wired to return to Mexico, how could scientists start a new colony in TEXAS, one that these turtles, once they grew up, would eventually return to?
The scientists came up with a plan. A complicated one.
Donna: We sent down Padre Island sand for those eggs to be collected, to be packed, and to come back to Padre Island where they are cared for until hatching.
Carlyle: the eggs sit in an incubation facility until they are ready to hatch. Then -
Donna: We took them down to the beach, released them, allowed them to crawl down the beach so they get this exposure to the Padre Island Beach as hatchlings. So we tried to imprint turtles to Padre Island in hopes that they would return there to nest.
Carlyle: then the tiny turtles were taken back to the lab until they grew larger. to give them a better shot against predators. Until finally, finally, they were released one by one, and the young Kemp’s swam out into the Gulf.
Donna: And it's magnificent when you see it gliding through the water
Carlyle: But would it work…after all the shipping of sand and turtle eggs back and forth between the US and Mexico…would any of these turtles actually return to Padre Island and repopulate, to help save the species?
Donna: biologists didn’t know if any of these turtles would survive!
CARLYLE: Donna was in charge of looking for the miracle. she headed up kind of a bootstrap operation. And for years, she and a squad of turtle-loving volunteers patrolled Padre Island beach – keeping watch for any returning turtles.
Donna: but with, with no money, no vehicles, nothing. So we tried to do the best we could to look. Year after year, and I finally, you know, I know that they started to give up hope and think it was Linus in the pumpkin patch
You know, in Charlie Brown when Linus waits all by himself in the pumpkin patch, waiting on the arrival of the mythical Great Pumpkin while everyone else is trick-or-treating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2H0TfvNU3w
:25 Charlie Brown “You must be crazy. When are you going to stop believing in something that isn’t true”
Carlyle: but finally, in 1996, it happened.
Donna: I'm the one who didn't give up. I believed, and yet when I saw the first one, uh, with my own eyes, brushed off the top shell, saw the living tag, brushed it off again,, wet it, looked at it again, and I said, Oh my God, this is what we've been waiting for all these years. I was so overjoyed, I jumped up and down and jumped up and down and hugged the people that were with me.
Carlyle: Incredibly, the desperate experiment worked! A decade after releasing these turtles as babies, two now grown-up Kemps had come back here, to their adopted home. And there is now a second nesting colony on Padre Island. And, every year, with more baby Kemp’s making it to adulthood to reproduce and also new technology to keep turtles out of fishing nets, the species started recovering. Scientists were absolutely amazed at the comeback. And things were finally looking up for the Kemp’s.
Donna: It was thought that up until about 2010, the mathematical models predicted that the population was going to continue exponentially and could be downlisted to a threatened species in the year 2020. Well, 2020's passed, and it didn't happen.
Kemp’s Ridleys aren’t called the heartbreak turtle for nothing.
music
While Donna and her scientist friends were lovingly trying to recolonize the turtles one by one on the beach—another kind of man-made challenge was on the horizon in the deep water.
TEASE:
News Clip of BP
That’s after the break.
[MIDROLL]
Ambient plane landing
CARLYLE: Flying low on the back side of the Chandeleur islands, the Kodiak lands in shallow water. Matt, Todd and I all grab our backpacks loaded down with gear, and climb out of the plane to begin our search for the elusive Kemp’s..
Ambient walking through water.
Carlyle: We all hop off the plane into thigh deep water and wade through a meadow of seagrass, then through sharp blades of marsh, and eventually climb up onto dry land. A pristine island…no trace of humans except for us and the plane.
But that wasn’t the case back in 2010 - when the BP Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, releasing an ungodly amount of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst environmental disaster in US history.
Matt: the Chandeleurs were just ground zero so many times when that oil was coming in, it was a, you know, a constant release for, for months.
Carlyle: At the time, Matt, the state biologist, managed Louisiana’s Wildlife and Fisheries response to the spill.
Matt: it was a sad time and it was a scary time because, you know, for such a long time the well wasn't controlled. We didn't know when it was gonna end. You know, I didn't know if it was gonna end. And, uh, we were, we were working, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 hour days trying to keep up.
Carlyle: Oil was everywhere - along the coast, in the marshes, in the mangroves. Land was eroded. Habitat was lost. And Matt and Todd were both working like crazy to help save wildlife from the largest oil spill of all time.
These barrier islands, the Chandeleurs, were among the hardest-hit spots anywhere.
And Kemp's Ridleys were among the hardest-hit species
You see the Chandeleurs that jut into the Gulf, well they happen to be on the edge of the Kemp’s Ridley’s favorite feeding ground, where young Kemp’s love to hang out in the sargassum seaweed and eat all the little plants and animals that gather there. And this buffet now sat directly in the middle of the oil spill,
Matt: I mean, that's their nurseries, and just as that, that floating sargassum collects in certain areas, the floating oil also collects in those same areas
Carlyle: It was estimated that almost half a million sea turtles were exposed to oil during the spill, and over half of those were Kemp’s Ridleys. In total, well over a hundred thousand young sea turtles died. Before the spill, Kemp's numbers were recovering. But in the years following the BP disaster, their population again began to fall. Scientists say there could be more factors at play, but the oil spill was devastating to the species.
Matt: there were plenty of oiled kemps, you know, dead and alive, recovered, uh, you know, from those impacted areas.
Carlyle: Hearts were breaking all over again.
[Sad music// TRANSITION]
BUT last summer, hope returned.
In July of 2022, more than ten years after the BP oil spill, Todd and Matt were flying to the Chandeleurs to survey birds. When, they spotted those now familiar tire track-like marks in the sand from above.
The biologists started exploring the beach by foot, searching for those tracks - also known as “crawls” they suspected belonged to a sea turtle that found its way back to these battered islands.
What they found was even more astounding. … Because when they followed some tracks back to the edge of a dune, they didn’t just see any baby sea turtle, but the most endangered–... a baby Kemp’s Ridley.
Matt and Todd were high-fiving! They couldn’t believe it! And neither could anyone else. After all these islands have been through–getting hammered by repeated hurricanes and disasters—after 75 years, Kemp’s Ridleys are back here – on the Chandeleur Islands!
So far, Matt and Todd have confirmed 13 nests this year. And today, we’re hoping to find more of them.
Todd: I've got some VHF radios. I've got one of my backpack. Okay. When we split from you, I'll turn this on 10. So just in case, just in case we need to talk
Matt: 10. Yeah.
Todd: Hands over a radio to Matt. We head off down the empty beach.
Matt: Quarter mile, south. Alright.
Carlyle: Matt is checking out his GPS for coordinates. We are trying to find them. The tracks Todd saw from the air.
Todd: The right direction. Yeah.
Matt: It's easy to pass them up.
Carlyle: Then off in the distance, we finally see them.
Matt: That looks like there may be something right there.
Carlyle: Todd pulls out his camera and starts taking pictures. Even up close they look like tire tracks, but from a vehicle that got lost.
Todd: right now we're just trying to figure out what exactly is going on because usually once they nest, they'll go straight back out to the water, but this one meanders up and meanders off.
Carlyle: We follow the crawls across the beach and back onto the edge of the dunes. Where Todd and Matt start looking for what's called a body pit. It sounds bad–but it’s not. It’s the area of sand the turtle clears before using her flippers to dig an egg chamber where she'll lay her eggs.
Matt: Something else is right over there, maybe.
Carlyle We keep wandering the edge of the dunes where turtles usually lay their eggs, hoping to find that nest.
Carlyle: So we just crawled up over Over the dune. This is not common?
Matt: No. Not, not common for, you know, his many attempts at nesting. This might be the fourth attempt right here. We're gonna look around a little bit more,
Carlyle: but she just wasn't feeling it?
Tdd: She thought she was feeling it and then she changed her mind.
Carlyle: Todd and Matt measure the turtle crawl length and width, and add it to the chart on their clipboards.
Todd: We'll name this one “Disappointment Nest. ”
Carlyle: after 45 minutes of swatting mosquitoes and searching the dunes, no dice. nothing. It's a false crawl, meaning the mamma turtle never made a nest.
Todd: So in this case, she thought she found a spot and for whatever reason it wasn't good enough. And then she went back out to the, to the gulf. So, so she'll be back though, hopefully anyway.
It might sound like we’re just turtle lovers on a turtle safari, but Todd and Matt are here to gather data. They’ve been flying out here weekly since the beginning of nesting season in May - in an effort to prove these endangered turtles are indeed back on the Chandeleurs.
Because as these islands become a haven for endangered turtles, another heartbreak could be looming.
The Chandeleurs and coastal Louisiana are disappearing. We are losing land here at one of the fastest rates on earth for a whole bunch of reasons, almost all of them due to us humans.
If there's a silver lining to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it’s this: eventually BP was forced to pay up for its environmental crimes. Just under 9 billion of the $20 billion settlement is set aside for restoration of the Gulf coast. Which means there MIGHT be money to restore THESE islands, and help THESE turtles.
That’s IF Todd, who works for the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority can convince those holding the pursestrings, that these wild barrier islands, inhabited only by birds and seagrass and sea turtles- are WORTH SAVING.
Because while 9 billion might SOUND like a lot of money, down here in the Gulf, there are countless places NEED restoring. And there’s a lot of competition and heated debate over who, what and where deserves that restoration money.
Todd’s hoping for over $200 million. enough to pay for a massive and delicate construction project to build back up these islands, make them resilient––so that they too can survive. But will the Chandeleurs get it?
Todd: So what we don't really know at this point, we're in the data collection mode, we don't have a single dime for construction just yet. Um, and so a lot of what we build will depend on the funding.
Carlyle: But now, there's even more reason to save this place. Todd has a new, beloved mascot to prove it.
Todd: Mother Nature's built perfect islands for these. turtles. And what we want to do is provide more fuel to Mother Nature to continue to do what she's been doing for a long time. So she'll take care of making sure the turtle habitat is out here to some extent, but we're going to try to give it our best jumpstart that we can.
Carlyle: There is data from way back in the 1940s showing that the Chandeleurs were once an important habitat for Kemp's. That it possibly was home to a small colony.
And after everything the turtles and the islands have been through…they were kind of written off. No one expected sea turtles back here…let alone the most endangered of them all
[TRANSITION WITH AMBI FROM TURTLE SAFARI]
Back out on the beach - we approach crawl number 17, according to Matt’s chart. Which they discovered in late May.
Matt: And this is the species we, we believe it to be, we believe it's a Kemp's. And then also our earliest hatch date on this one's July 8th. So any day now, if this is a viable nest, any day now, we'll have, hatchlings emerging. So, pretty exciting stuff
Carlyle: Any day now! I can hardly stand it. I've never seen a baby sea turtle before of any species. But ever since learning more about the story of the Kemp's, I've been dying to see one. And of course, Matt's been telling me how amazing it is to see them up close.
Matt: I consider us very lucky I mean, we spend a good bit of time out here, doing these surveys. But this year, we got to see two actual turtles, two adult females, ashore, one actively, one was nesting, one was, laying eggs when we flew over. That was, that was great. I mean, that was phenomenal. Like, we were so excited to see it. And then the first nest we evaluated, we found two alive hatchlings in there, which is just, just awesome.
Carlyle: Matt tells me the two teeny babies were struggling to crawl out of the nest. He and Todd helped them make it down to the surf. Two more Kemp's making it into the Gulf.
Matt: nd yeah, uh, the species is recovering. The numbers are still low. The recovery's kind of tapered off in recent years.
Carlyle: Sea turtles are what are known as a keystone species. Which basically means, they are critical to the larger ecosystem, and if they are doing alright, that means the ecosystem is as well. So these turtles showing up on the beaches of this isolated string of islands is telling us not only that Kemp's may be doing better, so is the whole system here. One people didn't know would ever fully recover. And those baby Kemp's Ridley turtles, the ones Todd and Matt just saw or the ones that will hatch any day now, they’re imprinting on this beach.
If will be years before Todd will find out whether his campaign to win BP settlement funds for the Chandeleurs, was successful.
Then maybe, just maybe these islands will be restored in a meaningful enough way to withstand the coming hurricanes and sea level rise, that in 15 or so years, when these baby hatchling sea turtles return to have babies of their own, the beach where they were once born, will be here for them to return to.
Matt: I mean, to be able to, see them swim off is, you know, there are odds of making it, you know, like one in a thousand, you know, but, just the nests we're finding this year, we've got, hundreds of camps, making it to those waters, well over 1000, I'm sure. we're hoping, uh, this'll be a, you know, Potentially even a, small colony for Kemp someday,
Carlyle: so far today we’ve been striking out.
Matt: It was, yeah, it wasn't a, a total bust. We had one really interesting crawl and then yeah, we had a false crawl,(might need but then she ultimately went back to the water with her eggs and then yeah) but those turtles are still around.
Those eggs are going to have to come out, so they'll be back on our beach. We might catch them next week.
Carlyle: There may be Kemp's out here, but unfortunately, I didn't see them. Turns out I am not lucky as hell today. Kemp's Ridleys are proving themselves to still be mysterious. 13 turtle nests is a lot when until last summer, people expected none, but it's really not that many. Flying back on the seaplane, I was bummed not to see any Kemp's, not to experience this exciting return of an ancient, endangered species.
But I have to remember to temper my expectations, i mean even turtle expert Donna Shaver scoured the beach for a decade before she got the chance to see a returning Kemp’s. She didn’t give up hope.
And of course, the important thing is that Kemp’s Ridleys have come back! to Padre Island and to the Chandeleurs. But anyone who knows the story of the heartbreak turtle knows you have to remain vigilant.
Donna: Because the species is not fully recovered yet. We've made strides, but it's still the most critically endangered sea turtle species. there's still more that must be done and people that want to take their foot off the pedal and move on to other things because this has been going on a long time. We need you. We need you to hang in there because we're not there yet. It's one of God's creatures, and who are we to say which one comes and which one goes and which one we should give up on.
Carlyle: I got an email from Matt and Todd the other day. They told me they didn’t find any more nests after our expedition together…their final count this summer was 13. But unfortunately, many of them didn’t hatch and Matt and Todd don’t know why. They are still analyzing the data, but they think this year’s record-breaking heat and drought may have played a role. Two things we know are worsening due to a changing climate.
Back home in New Orleans, I see our own changing habitat. The threats to people in Southern Louisiana that are maybe not so different from the ones the Kemps are facing just offshore, on their vanishing island.
Donna has a favorite quote, and part of it reads: “in the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand…”
Donna, Todd, Matt, and many others are still trying to understand the riddles of the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles. And we are all trying to understand what climate change means for us all.
And I wonder if we choose to also protect the wild places where we don’t live and species beyond ourselves, then maybe there is hope. And maybe our hearts won’t have to break again …at least not for these tiny turtles.
Thanks for listening to Sea Change. This episode was reported and hosted by me, Carlyle Calhoun.
Editing help was provided by Nora Saks, Garrett Hazelwood and Halle Parker. Our sound designer is Maddie Zampanti. Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX.
Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux (Mur-o) Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
See you all in two weeks.
