More than 250 cold-stunned sea turtles have been rescued along the shores of Cape Cod recently.
The New England Aquarium is currently treating more than 200 cold-stunned sea turtles that have washed onto Massachusetts shores in critical condition, an annual phenomenon that has ramped up in the past week, according to a statement by the aquarium.
Staff and volunteers from Massachusetts Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary have been walking the beaches along Cape Cod Bay in search of cold-stunned turtles and transporting the animals to the Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts, where they are treated for life-threatening medical conditions resulting from hypothermia and the inability to feed.
So far this season, aquarium staffers have treated 257 live sea turtles: 214 critically endangered Kemp’s ridley turtles, 39 green turtles, and four loggerheads. Roughly 100 of those turtles were rescued at the beginning of this week.
Each fall and early winter, hundreds of cold-stunned sea turtles wash up on the beaches of Cape Cod. Because of the rapidly changing water temperature and wind pattern, many turtles cannot escape the hook-like area of Cape Cod Bay and become hypothermic.
The vast majority of the sea turtles that strand each year are Kemp’s ridleys, a critically endangered species that faces threats including fisheries interactions, climate change, ocean pollution, and degradation of their habitats.
