Endangered Species: The Kemp

by Aron Lemon

Submitted : Spring 2010

The most endangered species of sea turtle, the Kemp’s Ridley, is dangerously close to extinction. Nesting sites have been declining rapidly. Monitoring of nesting sites began in 1947, and since then the decline has been drastic. This project utilized the exponential function equation to find the average rate of loss, as well as to form a graph showing the data set. Values were obtained from an online database and used in the equation to find the approximate rate of loss, and to show that the rate of loss very closely follows the exponential trend line. This close relationship showed that the loss of nesting sites for the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle are almost exponential, meaning that without intervention of some sort the species will become extinct.

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