Aquarium helps save cold-shocked sea turtles
Sixteen critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles were recently brought to Mystic Aquarium for several months of rehabilitation after they were found coldshocked on Cape Cod by volunteers.
The turtles, which do better in southern climates, were whisked to the National Marine life Center in Buzzard’s Bay in Massachusetts for emergency triage and stabilization before being transferred to Mystic for long-term care.
All are juveniles, about 3 years old, which is too young to determine if they are male or female.
“When you think about how critically endangered these animals are, it’s amazing that when you save just one sea turtle the difference it can make in the population,” said Sarah Callan, manager of Mystic Aquarium’s animal rescue program.
“They’re going to lay hundreds, thousands of eggs throughout their lifetime potentially.”
The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle is the smallest and most endangered of the world’s sea turtles. They are famous in the Gulf of Mexico, where they gather in the thousands to lay eggs en mass on the same stretches of beach.
Over 90 percent of these turtles lay their eggs at Rancho Nuevo beach in Tamaulipas, Mexico.
“In the early years before they were protected, there was a legal take of eggs from nesting beaches,” said Pamela Plotkin, a recently retired professor from Texas
A&M University who has 40 years of experience in Gulf of Mexico environmental restoration.
“So you can imagine with 100,000 females coming to one place to lay their eggs, one could quickly amass a large number of eggs to send to market.”
Plotkin said Mexico moved to protect the nesting beaches in the 1960s, but in the 1970s and 1980s the surviving adults were being captured by commercial fishing vessels.
“The good news is that the federal government developed a device known as a turtle excluder device that can go into the net of a bottom trawler,” said Plotkin.
“It basically ejects any turtle caught in a bottom trawler net.”
Plotkin said these two protections have done a lot to help the turtles recover, but it’s harder to protect juvenile turtles as they migrate out along the Atlantic coast.
The hazards of Cape Cod and climate change
In the Northeast, where these turtles are extremely vulnerable, they are tended to by a dedicated group of hobbyists, conservationists and turtle rescuers.
On Cape Cod, Kemp’s ridley turtles are frequently found disoriented and hypothermic on shore.
Cape Cod is both a geographic nightmare and the farthest northern reach of Kemp’s ridley turtles.
Juvenile and young-adult turtles swim off the coast, following food, exploring estuaries and growing. As the weather gets colder, the turtles try to swim their way down south.
“With the abrupt change in temperature, these turtles have to try to get back down south quicker,” said Callan.
“These are really small turtles, the smallest species of sea turtle in the world … All of that goes against them as they’re trying to fight the currents and weather to get back down south quickly.”
But with climate change, the winter cold comes on suddenly and irregularly, Callan said. The turtles in Cape Cod Bay end up trapped, trying to crawl south over the cape’s great sandbar.
Those outside the bay in open water find themselves at the mercy of a cold, rough sea.
“We have sea turtle responders who walk the beach on a regular basis, especially in wind and weather conditions that might trigger sea turtles to wash up” on shore, said Callan.
Turtles are cold-blooded and rely on the environment to regulate their body temperature. When the temperature drops suddenly, they experience a kind of hypothermia, their respiration, body movements and heartbeats slow down. They stop breathing, digesting and swimming.
“When we find them they’re really lifeless, really cold,” said Callan. It took about three days to slowly bring the rescued turtles out of hypothermia.
“We have to slowly bring their body temperature up by about five degrees every day until they get to 70-75 degrees.”
Turtles in recovery
The turtles arrived at Mystic’s Milne Ocean Science and Conservation Center in reused banana shipping boxes lined with towels.
The animal care team members examined each turtle, assessed its health and developed treatment plans for each one.
“We don’t actually feed our turtles for the first week or two,” said Callan. “That’s because if we were to feed them while their (gastrointestinal tract) isn’t moving, all that food is going to sit in them and rot and cause more problems.”
Callan said that the turtles had only recently started eating for the first time while in their care. The team is watching each turtle closely to make sure it regains weight and strength.
After being brought up to temperature, the turtles are monitored to see if they can crawl, digest food and swim, a process that takes about three weeks.
Callan said that originally 16 turtles were brought to Mystic. The weakest, sickest turtle died within the first three weeks.
“It was just in really critically shape,” said Callan. “We did everything we could for it, but we had one that didn’t make it.”
The veterinary team is also concerned and on the lookout for pneumonia. When the turtles are in cold shock, their immune system stops functioning.
Many stranded turtles arrive sick but don’t show symptoms until they warm up. Callan said that “almost all” of the remaining Kemp’s ridley sea turtles had pneumonia.
“We’re treating them right now” with antibiotics, said Callan. “They’re getting frequent checkups.”
In several months some of the turtles might be healthy enough to be released. Callan anticipates that by March some of them will be taken south to warmer ocean waters for release.
“We release them right from the beach,” said Callan. “I’ve walked them out in the water past where the waves are breaking, and they usually kick off right away. They can’t wait to get back out to the big blue.”
Plotkin applauded Mystic’s efforts to rehabilitate the sea turtles, saying it’s valuable to save as many individual turtles as possible.
“If we spend all this money trying to protect the eggs only to have them swim up to Massachusetts and then die every winter, that’s not a good use of our time,” said Plotkin.
“So, I think it’s a great thing to rescue Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.”