Turtle Journal

Sue Wieber Nourse with Cold-Stunned Juvenile Terrapin

To celebrate the end of February, the cruelest month in the Great White North, the Turtle Journal team traveled to Outer Cape Cod on March 1st for a pre-season assessment of the long winter’s damage.  As we patrolled the shoreline of the Fox Island Wildlife Management Area (WMA) on Indian Neck in South Wellfleet, Sue Wieber Nourse rescued a cold-stunned juvenile terrapin in the wrack line.  The turtle’s shell blended perfectly into the salt hay debris, demanding a sharp researcher’s eye to spot her.

Four-Year-Old, Cold-Stunned Diamondback Terrapin

Clinging to life, this stolid four-year-old terrapin was cold to the touch.  Her eyes were closed and, while she was responsive, her limbs were clearly weakened.  She was unable to crawl, and she was dehydrated.  Likely unearthed from her marsh hibernaculum by winter winds and ice floes, she was exposed to the elements and would have succumbed, had not Sue discovered her tangled in the deserted wrack.

Rescued Four-Year-Old Cold-Stunned Diamondback Terrapin

Back at Turtle Journal  headquarters, this young juvenile is soaking in lukewarm water and has begun to move her head about to examine her surroundings.  We will continue to warm her gradually until she regains health, and we will return her to the wild, once spring conditions permit.

Mature Female Diamondback Terrapin Carapace

Across Blackfish Creek on Lieutenant Island, we patrolled shorelines that had sustained substantial damage in the last series of winter storms.  Much sand has been lost from north-facing Turtle Pass and the Hook, as well as Turtle Point on the south side of the island; all critical terrapin nesting sites.  As we walked the bearberry banks above Turtle Point, Don Lewis discovered the carapace of a large, mature female that had succumbed probably in the fall.

Mature Male Diamondback Terrapin Plastron

A few feet to the west, Don found the shell of a deceased mature male terrapin.  Both turtles had been marked by terrapin researchers in better times.  Reading these markings, however, will require sleuthing because of the poor condition of the shells. The Turtle Journal team will search its database and digital imagery records to determine their history.

@ Old Methodist Meeting House, February 9^th at 10:00 AM

Helping Hand for 200-Pound Loggerhead Sea Turtle

Through the magic of digital media, Don Lewis and Sue Wieber Nourse will transform Wareham’s Old Methodist Meeting House into the storm-tossed Atlantic coastline, so adventurers from five to 95 can experience first-hand the thrill of rescuing the world’s most endangered sea turtles.  We’ll cast off the ordinary world of bricks and mortar, jump inside a dazzling sound and light show, and unleash our inner explorer.  Along the ocean shore, we’ll come face to face with five species of sea turtles that frequent Massachusetts waters.  We’ll rescue a half ton leviathan, a massive female leatherback, entangled in Cape Cod Bay.  We’ll patrol windswept beaches on the coldest, darkest, most dangerous nights of November and December to rescue hundreds of the helpless tropical and semi-tropical sea turtles.

Don Lewis Rescues Two Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtles

The hook of Cape Cod, an accident of geology and the Laurentide glacier, has become a lethal trap for ocean critters.  Here in the Great White North, sea turtle stranding season arrives each year as frost forms on the pumpkin. Juvenile sea turtles linger in Cape Cod Bay as fall arrives, sea temperatures drop and they’re cued to head south to warmer climes. Sadly, these turtles become locked in the bay by a wall of ocean water too cold for reptiles to pass.  They’re trapped with no escape. Eventually bay water, too, reaches critical temperature and these turtles become cold-stunned and strand on bayside beaches in fall storms.  Hypothermia grips as frigid winds plunge body temperatures to freezing; death follows quickly if turtles are not recovered by intrepid rescuers.  The Turtle Journal team will share their personal experiences with sea turtle rescues and talk about this global stranding hotspot.

Sue Wieber Nourse and Jared Nourse Rescue Kemp’s Ridley

Don Lewis:  Known as “The Turtle Guy,” Don’s research and rescue exploits on turtles and other threatened marine species have been featured on National Geographic TV and chronicled in national, regional and local media.  Don’s work has been profiled in books on global animal rescue, endangered wildlife management, habitat preservation and natural resource conservation.

Sue Wieber Nourse, research scientist, marine biologist and master educator, is CEO of Cape Cod Consultants, an environmental solutions company specializing in wildlife management and critical habitat assessments that protect nature while expeditiously enabling client objectives.  An intrepid adventurer, Sue led underwater research projects from the Canaries through the Caribbean Sea to the Hawaiian Islands, and from the Florida Keys through the Bahamas and Bermuda to Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod Bay and the Gulf of Maine.

Their original nature stories and professional wildlife photography have appeared in newspapers, magazines and broadcast media locally, across the nation and around the globe.  Don and Sue document the nature of coastal Massachusetts on their web site, Turtle Journal (http://www.turtlejournal.com/), and they share real-time adventures directly from the wild on Twitter (www.twitter.com/turtlejournal).

Florida Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus)

Looking for alien creatures?  No need for NASA to blast off into Outer Space when its most famous launch pad has already been invaded by critters straight out of the backlot of a low budget, 1950’s horror flick.  Gopher tortoises check all the right boxes.  Exotic? Yep.  Cold-blooded?  You bet.  Ancient species?  300 million years and counting.  If  we were NASA, we might suggest looking down rather than up for the greatest discoveries.

Kennedy Space Center Famous Launch Pad 39 Complex

The Turtle Journal team headed for the Bahamas over the Christmas holiday with a day’s stopover in Port Canaveral to re-acclimate our frozen northern bodies to tropical conditions.  While there, we arranged a behind-the-scenes, VIP tour of the Kennedy Space Center, guided by an official NASA representative.  Little did we expect to turn this brief vacation interlude into a busman’s holiday.

Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39A

More than 3.5 miles from NASA’s gigantic Vehicular Assembly Building (VAB) at the other end of the massive crawlway stands Launch Pad 39 Complex, famous as the gateway for all Apollo program (moon) launches, as well as space shuttle launches.  See map below.

Map of Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island

The 39 A & B Complex was positioned so distant from the VAB because in case of a catastrophic failure, no one would survive the fuel explosion closer than 3.5 miles.  In fact, within a few thousand feet of the launch pad, the sound waves themselves, generated by a normal blast off, would be powerful enough to stop the heart of anyone unbuffered from their effect.

Gopher Tortoise within Launch Pad 39 Complex

So, perhaps you might be as surprised as the Turtle Journal team when our vehicle drove through the Launch Pad 39 Complex.  Between 39A and 39B — the launch pads for every moon and space shuttle flight, we spotted a large gopher tortoise scurrying towards its burrow.  The mature turtle scampered down the hillside as our vehicle approached and plunged its head into the burrow opening.

Gopher Tortoise Hides at Launch Pad 39 Complex

With his head in the burrow and full body and carapace outside, the tortoise couldn’t see us … and according to the First Universal Rule of Turtles, “If you can’t see your predator, then your predator can’t see you.”  This old specimen has been around the Cape for a long, long time.  We’re sure this turtle has witnessed the launches of Apollo 8 and 11 en route to the moon, and every space shuttle flight that has ever flown.  At the same time, the most honored human VIP observer has to stay more than 3.5 miles away.  When it comes to space launches, turtles get the best seats.

Juvenile Gopher Tortoise Tracks at Launch Pad 39 Complex

Nearby Launch Pad 39B is being renovated for the next generation of manned space flights where humans will venture once more to the moon, to the asteroids and then to Mars and beyond.  Our tortoise friend will be on hand to experience these adventures, too … but he won’t be alone.  In a nearby burrow, we found tracks from at least one juvenile tortoise.  It’s quite amazing the prized real estate that Florida gopher tortoises have staked out.  These Kennedy Space Center gopher tortoise burrows are situated directly on the Atlantic shoreline, across the Florida peninsula from their kissing cousins who occupy equally pricey burrows at the Ritz Carlton Naples Resort on the Gulf.