Genome assembly of the sea turtle Lepidochelys kempii

Kemps Ridleys (<i>Lepidochelys kempii</i>) can be found from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to Bermuda. Nesting Ridleys are found mainly in the Gulf of Mexico. In migration, they follow two major routes: one heads north to the Mississippi coastline and the second extends southward to the shores of the Yucatan Peninsula at the Campeche Bank.<br>In this study we report the genomic sizes for haplotype-separated chromosome-scale assemblies for <i>L. kempii</i> are ~2.2 Gb, with contig N50 ~55 Mb. The annotated genes are 26,436 and 25,992 for Haploype 1 and Haplotype 2, respectively.