Turtle Journal

 

Sue Wieber Nourse, Don Lewis & Juvenile Kemp’s Ridley

As long shadows form and days begin to shorten, Turtle Journal’s thoughts and plans turn to sea turtle rescue season.  Endangered juvenile sea turtles become trapped in the great seine net called Cape Cod Bay that stretches forty miles into the North Atlantic and “catches” turtles as they migrate south with dropping sea temperature.  The warmer the summer season, the higher the probability that increased numbers of sea turtles will get trapped in the bay and become cold-stunned in November. 

 

Rescued Cold-Stunned Sea Turtles (clockwise):

Kemp’s Ridley (top left), Green, Loggerhead, Hybrid

Over the last few decades more than a thousand of the most endangered sea turtles in the world have been recovered off Cape Cod beaches by volunteers organized by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary (see Gearing Up for Sea Turtle Stranding Season on Cape Cod).  The overwhelming majority (more than 90% in recent years) have been juvenile (1.5 to 3 year old) Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.  Other rescued sea turtles include loggerheads, greens, hybrids and rarely hawksbills.

Rescued Kemp’s Ridley at Chapin Beach, Cape Cod

This youngster pictured above was rescued by Turtle Journal early in the 2008 stranding season at Chapin Beach in Dennis (see Saving a Critically Endangered Sea Turtle).  Because it preceded the actual cold-stunning event by nearly two months, and was still quite lively, we decided to release it directly into Nantucket Sound so that it could continue its journey southward uninterrupted by a trip to the rehabilitation wards.

Rescued Kemp’s Ridley Released off Osterville, Cape Cod

At Dowses Beach in Osterville we released the young Kemp’s ridley and watched as it quickly swam off into the depths of Nantucket Sound.

First Observed Nesting Kemp’s Ridley

Blind Pass Beach, Manasota Key, Florida

Mature Female Kemp’s Ridley Nesting

On May 26th, 2010 Jessie Couto of the Coastal Wildlife Club filmed a female Kemp’s ridley sea turtle nesting at Blind Pass Beach on Manasota Key off the Gulf of Mexico.   This all volunteer club is licensed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to survey beaches in Sarasota, Charlotte and Lee counties, protecting endangered sea turtle nests.  This female Kemp’s ridley, though, proved unique; she laid the first observed nest of this most endangered species of sea turtle on Manasota Key, perhaps colonizing a new nesting site for Kemp’s ridley along the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Blind Pass Beach, Manasota Key, Florida

The Coastal Wildlife Club generously shared these video clips with Turtle Journal, so that we can see what the potential impact of our rescue operations here on Cape Cod may have on the full life cycle of Kemp’s ridley turtles.  Perhaps from the more than one thousand Kemp’s ridleys that we have recovered cold-stunned and helpless from Cape Cod Bay and returned back into the wild, perhaps one of these rescued females has colonized new Gulf of Mexico beaches like this pioneering female.

Kemp’s Ridley Finishes First Observed Nest on Manasota Key

As we watched the video of this female Kemp’s ridley completing her nest on Blind Pass Beach, we couldn’t help drawing the comparison with the “footwork” of our local diamondback terrapins that seem to have mastered the same rear limb steps in the dance for turtle survival.

Kemp’s Ridley Female Returns to Gulf of Mexico

As the camera records her return to the Gulf of Mexico after successfully completing her nest, we can imagine the full cycle of Kemp’s ridley conservation.  Some of our colleagues in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, Padre Island, Texas, and now Manasota Key, Florida observe nesting and protect eggs through incubation and hatchling release into the sea.  We take on the role of patrolling frigid, storm-tossed beaches of Cape Cod each November and December rescuing young juveniles trapped by the cold and near death from hypothermia.  Our friends at the New England Aquarium provide emergency medical care to these weakened sea turtles and, with our other partners throughout the Northeast, provide long-term rehabilitation.  Finally, we get to return these rescued turtles back into the wild to restore a critically endangered population (see World’s Most Endangered Sea Turtle, Rescued in Winter by Turtle Journal, Released in Summer).  Whether any single turtle matches all aspects of this continuous story of rescue and conservation matters less than the big picture story itself: conservationists throughout North America banding together as partners to save the future of sea turtles on this ocean planet.

If you’d like to help save endangered sea turtles from certain death during the fiercest weather conditions of November and December in the Great White North of Cape Cod, let us know at Turtle Journal (turtlejournal@gmail.com) by email or through our hotline (508-274-5108) or get in touch with volunteer coordinator Cynthia Franklin (cfranklin@massaudubon.org) at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary at 508-349-2615.  For those less agile and adventurous to challenge dangerous storm-tossed beaches in the dead of night, there are many ways to help this rescue program from offering clean towels to driving rescued animals from triage in Wellfleet Bay to treatment at the New England Aquarium.  Thank you in advance for saving some of the world’s most endangered, yet charismatic, creatures.

Turtle Release Party at Wareham Community Gardens

Courtesy of Jaime Rebham of Wareham Week.  “Turtle researchers Don Lewis and Sue Wieber Nourse, along with over a dozen curious supporters, released the 1-inch-long hatchlings into the grassy shore of a pond behind the Wareham Community Gardens.”

Touched by Nature — Mckenzie Coughlin of Wareham

On Saturday morning the Wareham community released 18 painted turtle hatchlings into the wild.  These babies emerged from five nests that had been protected by the good stewards at the Wareham Community Gardens off Tihonet Road.  Sharing this space with painted turtles who have been nesting on the site for centuries uncounted, Wareham gardeners sought to save the next generation of painted turtles for the next generation of Wareham children.  Interesting to imagine, the babies released on Saturday will be on hand at the turn of the next century (2100) to greet the grandchildren of the grandchildren who released them today.  Such is the way that turtles build communities and knit seamless continuity into the framework of time and nature.

Mckenzie Coughlin, an eighth grader at Wareham Middle School, was touched by Nature as she helped with the release.

Wareham Community Releases 18 Painted Hatchlings

Watch local newspapers, Wareham Week and the Wareham Courier, this week.  They should be covering the event.

Nickel-Sized Painted Turtle Hatchling

New Releases at the Wareham Community Gardens

(Click on title above to see original article on Village Soup Community Network)

By Cyrus Moulton, Wareham Week

Sep 01, 2010

Diamondback Terrapin Hatchling

August in the Great White North brings the miracle of birth for tiny turtles that have incubated under New England’s warm summer soil since June.  Diamondback terrapins erupt from sandy dunes dotting the coastlines of Cape Cod and Buzzards Bay.  Painted turtles and snapper hatchlings squiggle out of emergence holes surrounding ponds, lakes and rivers throughout the Northeast.  Eastern box turtle babies tunnel to daylight in backyards and woodland edges only to disappear under bush and leaf matter for the next several vulnerable years.

Don Lewis Documents Hatchling Emergence with Droid X

Perfect pre-autumn days with blue skies and warm rays baking the landscape encourage hatchlings to break for freedom from their subterranean nests.  Eggs that have cooked for sixty days under the protection of predator excluders have transformed to perfect miniature turtles ready to take on the world.  When they reach the surface, though, they confront an unlikely and unnatural barrier: the wire cage.  Little do they realize, of course, that the cage has protected them from the fate of 90% of nests that fall prey to voracious predators.  Little do they appreciate that the cage keeps hungry birds from snacking on these potato-chip crunchy treats as they appear from the sand.  For these hatchlings, the wired mesh is simply an obstacle that thwarts them from completing their natural imperative: scramble like the wind to find refuge in the thick salt marsh grass.

Jail Break at Turtle Point

Once nesting begins, Turtle Journal must check cages several times daily to ensure that baby turtles don’t become dehydrated in the hot sun.  As they emerge, hatchlings are documented and then given a powerful survival boost by getting escorted across the most dangerous few feet of their lives, from barren sand dune to lush vegetation.

 

Turtles, Turtles, All the Way Down!

There’s an old story that is recaptured in Stephen Hawking’s book, a Brief History of Time, about the ancient cosmological fable that the earth rests on the back of a turtle.  When a simple country woman was quizzed with the caustic, “What then, madam, does the turtle rest on?” by a pompous cosmologist, she replied without hesitation, “You can’t trick me, young man.  It’s turtles, turtles, all the way down.”  And so it seems when you’re excavating turtle nests and you find a helical line of hatchlings tunneling to the surface.

Allison Palmer and a Fist Full of Turtles

Hatchling time is a joyous time.  Residents who volunteered to protect these threatened critters when they were just tiny white eggs; residents who had guarded the nests in their backyards so tenaciously; residents who had patiently waited and waited and waited as the high suns of July had become the long shadows of late August; for these residents, now is the time of joy when all that protecting and waiting yields a crop of beautiful babies.  Allison Palmer, our harbinger of spring awakening when she calls each April to report that terrapins have emerged from winter slumber, holds a batch of diamondback hatchlings.

Andrea Pengeroth and Hatchlings

Andrea Pengeroth, who watched with amazement as a mother turtle deposited a nest in her Lieutenant Island backyard, who watered the nest through summer’s drought, and who protected the eggs from all comers, greets a couple of newborn hatchlings.

Diamondback, Painted and Box Hatchlings

Of course terrapins aren’t alone in this birthing season.   In the Turtle Journal rescue center, we have three species of bouncing babies: terapins, painted turtles and box turtles.  Each species has its own unique personality to match its wonderfully different colors and designs.

Bottoms Up: Painted, Diamondback, Box

Even from a bottoms-up perspective, they reflect their own individuality as a species.

Turtle Dance — But Who Has the Lead?

And if you’re looking for antics, you need go no further than wathcing a painted turtle and a diamondback terrapin engage in faux dance step.

Painted Turtle Hatchling

Painted turtles are faily ubiquitous and are not listed as endangered within Massachusetts.  Still, as we develop more and more of their natural habitat for our own purposes, these turtles too suffer from the pressure of human modernity.

Eastern Box Turtle Hatchling

The lumbering Eastern box turtle is a species of special concern in Massachusetts.  This little hatchling was protected from a nest dug on the edge of the busy Route 6 highway in Mattapoissett. 

 

Antics, Anyone?

Welcome to the hatching season!