The Cape Cod Times, “Kemp’s Ridley Turtle Found Stranded,” reports this morning, “The first cold-stunned Kemp’s ridley [sea] turtle of the stranding season was rescued in local waters yesterday [October 23rd], according to the Massachusetts Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.” Bob Prescott, director of the sanctuary, noted that the turtle weighed about 8 pounds and was estimated at around four years old. It had an old boat propellor injury on its left front flipper that may have weakened the turtle and predisposed this animal to early cold-stunned stranding.
Cold-stunned strandings of endangered sea turtles occur each fall in Cape Cod Bay. These juvenile reptiles, usually two to five years old, become trapped by walls of cold ocean water within the warmer hook of Cape Cod during normal southward migration as temperatures drop early each fall. When bay water plunges to around 50F, these turtles become cold-stunned, enter a stupor-like state and are tossed on the beach by sustained winds.
The earliest standed turtles, usually found in late October or early November, have the smallest mass, weighing in at five pounds or less. As the season progresses, larger and larger animals succumb to cold-stunning and are tossed by autumn storms onto the beach. Species include Kemp’s ridleys, green sea turtles and loggerheads, which are the more massive and usually the last ones to strand. Occasionally, a hybrid or a hawksbill has been known to strand on Cape Cod beaches. All strandings, with only an exception or two to prove the rule, occur on bayside beaches from Provincetown to Sandwich, with the greatest numbers found between Truro and Dennis.
Yesterday afternoon’s turtle was discoverd by beach walkers on Sandy Neck beach in Barnstable, brought to the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary for stabilization, and then transported to New England Aquarium for medical treatment and rehabilitation.
Two-Year-Old Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle Rescued from Chapin Beach, Dennis
You may recall that the Turtle Journal team rescued a small, pre-stunned Kemp’s Ridley at nearby Chapin Beach in Dennis on September 5th (see Saving a Critically Endangered Sea Turtle).
What to Do if You Find a Sea Turtle
Sea turtles are federally protected and cannot be legally handled without an appropriate license. If you see a sea turtle in distress on the beach, NEVER return it to the water. Move it above the high water mark, cover it with dry seaweed to prevent additional hypothermia, mark the spot with some gaudy flotsam and call Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary at 508-349-2615 as soon as possible. If your call comes “after hours,” you may leave a message on the sanctuary line or you can call the 24/7 turtle hot line at 508-274-5108 any time of the day or night. The Turtle Journal team will answer your call and respond immediately to rescue the animal.
As September chill grips Cape Cod, terrapins head for winter slumber (brumation). Only a few remain active late into the month and they become extremely difficult to find, less active and spending more of their time underwater, surfacing less frequently for air.
The Run in South Wellfleet
If you’re looking for turtles to sample this late in the month, one of the best places to try is the Run, a wide, shallow inlet south of Lieutenant Island linking many of the salt marsh channels where terrapins are known to brumate. Wednesday’s weather was clear with a brisk northeast wind off the Atlantic Ocean. The air temperature hovered around 60 and the water held in the mid to upper 50s. My legs froze while Sue more intelligently chose waders over bathing attire.
Sue Wieber Nourse Captures Female Terrapin 2149
Low tide came a 2:30 pm. In the Run, low tide marks the best chance to capture terrapins in the shallow, clearer water. Our first capture was an 11-year-old female that Sue spotted as the turtle raced up channel toward the marsh creeks. We had last observed this terrapin during field school on July 10th as she nested on a sandy bank just off Lieutenant Island. Since then she had gained nearly 200 grams for the long winter ahead.
Sue Wieber Nourse Hand-Netting Terrapins in the Run
Sue found the male terrapin, lazing motionless on the bottom. it was the first time we had captured this male that measured 12 centimeters long and weighed a little under 300 grams; that is, about 3/4 the linear length and 1/3 the mass of the female.
Foul Weather Approaches the Outer Cape
With a meteorological depression heading for the Great White North tomorrow and Saturday forecast to pound the Outer Cape with rain and wind and cold, chances are that this adorable couple will be the last adult terrapins we will capture until field season returns in late April. If history repeats, we will see a few more nests emerge until mid-October, and occasionally we will be confronted in the fall or in very early spring with a cold-stunned adult that didn’t find a particularly safe brumation site. For our active collection program, though, the gavel has sounded for the 2008 field season.
In keeping with the theme of this web site, “Saving the World One Turtle at a Time,” opportunity came knocking across the ether at 11:30 this morning. Five teachers from Nature’s Classroom (http://www.naturesclassroom.org/Yarmouth.htm) had traveled to Chapin Beach in Dennis for field orientation on the last day before school resumes next week. They spotted an apparently lethargic “sea turtle” in a shallow tidal pool. While most folks would have walked on by figuring that the incoming tide would handle the situation, or while someone else might have made the absolutely wrong choice of tossing the turtle into the sea to fend for itself, the Nature’s Classroom teachers took action. They called the sea turtle stranding center at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary (508-349-2615) to report the sighting. The sanctuary called us and the game was afoot.Â
Speaking over cell phone with the teachers, we learned that they had a fairly good handle on what constituted a sea turtle, but they were unsure of its species.  We asked that they remain with the animal while we sped to their location … about a 45 minute drive. As we reached Chapin Beach, the tide was flooding across the tidal flats with a vengeance. Two teachers were “escorting” the sea turtle in the shallows between sandbars. A brief look was enough to identify the animal as a Kemp’s ridley, one of the rarest and most critically endangered sea turtles in the world. By size we could estimate its age at two to two and a half years old. In other words, this animal was the typical juvenile sea turtle that we find cold-stunned on Cape Cod beaches from late October to December. But the cold-stunning season is still six or seven weeks in the future.
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Don Lewis Holds Rescued Juvenile Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle
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En route to the beach, we had alerted the New England Aquarium that we were responding to this potential sea turtle stranding. Now we called them back with the species identification and our assessment of the animal’s condition. There were early indications, beyond its lethargic behavior when first observed by the teachers, of the potential for future cold-stunning. The right rear quadrant of its carapace was covered with brown algae; algae was also beginning to form on the rear of the turtle’s plastron. There was a coating of algae on the top of the animal’s head and some algae buildup on the trailing edge of both front flippers. There were a few dings on the keel as though it had been wave-tossed against a rock groin or breakwater. When we observe turtles of this size during the outset of the cold-stunning season, we see the same, but much more extensive, indicators. At least by the time we arrived on the scene, this sea turtle had become quite strong and active.
Rescued Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle (Story in Video)
In conversations with the aquarium and by proxy with NOAA, we weighed three options: immediate release on site, medical examination at New England Aquarium, or immediate release on the southern side of Cape Cod into Nantucket Sound … so that it wouldn’t get trapped by cold waters within the bay and become hypothermic and cold-stun a month of so hence. Based on our field assessment, the decision was made for us to release the animal into Nantucket Sound from a southern Cape Cod beach.Â
We crated the sea turtle for transport in our Element. (Thank the gods of science that field researchers always come equipped for field emergencies!) We began the trek across the Cape with a short stop to visit with our friend & colleague Kara Dodge, currently a PhD candidate at UNH and formerly a NOAA sea turtle coordinator. She had flipper and PIT tags to append and to insert, and it gave us a nice quiet space to acquire the morphometric information we always document for sea turtles found in Cape Cod Bay.
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Don Lewis Reads Caliper and Kara Dodge Records Data
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Next we rendezvoused at the beach with a photographer from the Cape Cod Times whom we had alerted while driving from Dennis. With sea turtle stranding season only a few weeks in the future, we didn’t want to miss this opportunity to use a photo-op to make people aware of what’s coming and what they should do and who they should contact. By 3:15 in the afternoon we had released this fully charged sea turtle into the sound. When we let it go into the oncoming surf, the turtle exploded forward like a hotrod leaving salt spray rather than rubber as it accelerated from zero to sixty faster than you could say, “Kemp’s ridley.”
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Release of Rescued Kemp’s Ridley into Nantucket Sound
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Finding a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle in Cape Cod Bay other than on the beach during the cold-stunning season is an extremely rare event. There has only been one other such happening several years ago of which I am personally aware. In that case the decision was made to tag it and release it back into Cape Cod Bay with an extremely unsatisfactory outcome a month or so later. This time we maximized the odds that one of the most critically endangered species would have one more juvenile turtle to grow into adulthood and help restore its population. We hope to see this turtle’s flipper tags or detect its PIT tag on a nesting beach in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico in another 15 or 20 years. Or at least we hope that our successors in turtle conservation will see the fruit of today’s adventure in a couple of decades. (ASIDE: We’ve always considered it a bit unfair that sea turtles outlive sea turtle researchers.)
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A hearty bravo to Nature’s Classroom without whose intelligent action this morning, nothing good would have come of today’s event. And thanks also to a team of dedicated volunteers and professionals from Mass Audubon, the New England Aquarium, UNH and NOAA who responded to the challenge, made the best decision for the animal’s survival and flawless executed its impromptu rescue and release. And that’s how we intend to save the world: one turtle at a time.
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Don Lewis Releases Endangered Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle
