Cleaning a Sea Turtle

Checking a turtle's eye

The Deepwater Horizon Response Flickr site is one place to check if you want to see images from the oil spill. Since it is run by the government and BP, the images tend to put as positive of a spin as possible on the disaster. Despite that limitation, it sometimes has interesting photos, like this set showing the cleaning of a Kemp's Ridley Turtle (Lepidochelys kempii). All the photos in this post come from that set.

The Kemp's Ridley  Turtle is an endangered species. The main threat is from accidental capture by shrimp trawls or other types of fishing operations. Before beaches were protected, the turtles' eggs were vulnerable to harvesting. Unfortunately, the oil spill has added an extra threat to their survival.