More OBX sea turtles than ever are getting caught in cold water
As a result, reptiles can become ‘cold stunned,’ deathly ill
HATTERAS ISLAND, N.C. — Outer Banks volunteers have rescued more than 200 young sea turtles immobilized in the past couple months by two different sudden drops in temperature.
The two incidents combined, one in December and one this week, nearly match the event of January 2016, when more than 300 sea turtles floated ashore unable to eat or swim and likely to die without human intervention.
Before 2016, sea turtle strandings at this level rarely happened, said William Thompson, lead biological technician on Hatteras Island for the National Park Service. A winter cold spell in the previous years might generate five or six turtles with hypothermia lying along the shore, he said.
Turtle populations may be larger now and foraging may be improving, attracting more turtles to the region, or weather patterns could be different.
Biologists and dozens of volunteers, more aware since 2016, now search the beaches for stricken turtles on the shore after cold snaps, Thompson said.
Juvenile Kemp’s Ridley and green sea turtles eat heartily and happily in the Pamlico Sound when the temperatures are warm. Kemp’s Ridley turtles eat blue crabs and green sea turtles forage for grasses along the bottom, said Karen Clark, director of the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education.
When the temperature suddenly drops below 55 degrees, the cold-blooded creatures become “cold stunned.” They float to the surface and are driven by wind and waves to the shore. They can contract pneumonia and become deathly ill, Clark said.
This week, the water temperature hovered around 55 degrees when the weather suddenly changed and the water cooled overnight to around 40 degrees, Thompson said.
“We know that’s when there’s going to be a stranding event,” he said.
On Tuesday, 95 sea turtles were found and brought to the Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation Center at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. Another approximately 25 came in on Wednesday.
Experts there will feed and treat them as needed while they recover in water tanks. Later they will be released into the wild again.
In December, volunteers and park staff found more than 100 stunned sea turtles following sudden low temperatures over three days, Clark said.
It’s not certain why the turtles hang around until it gets too cold to move. The eating is very good in the sound and the turtles are only two or three years old, inexperienced with sudden cold snaps. They don’t seem to have a natural warning to get away before the weather changes.
“In a perfect world they would leave when it cooled.” Thompson said. “The foraging is good, the weather is good, why move?”
Jeff Hampton, 252-491-5272, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com