The story was originally published in bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainable living.
Sea turtles are swimming in the ocean. They glide through the water with long, gray-green flippers that move like slow wingbeats. The reptiles seem to be flying through the air at 10,000 feet above the ground.
120 sea turtles, 118 of which are juvenile Kemp's ridleys, shift uncomfortably among beach towels inside stacked Chiquita banana boxes, their eyes and curved pearlescent beaks peeking through slot handles. The metal cabin vibrates with the sound of the propellers as the pilots work to keep the plane aloft and the internal air temperature at a turtle-friendly 22 degrees Celsius. The cold air above New England slowly gives way to warm air in the south in December 2020. The turtles are being taken from Massachusetts to the Gulf Coast of Texas.
They are almost there eight hours later. A pilot with a sea turtle rescue organization called Turtles Fly Too says they are coming into the airport in Corpus Christi. Bill Gisler, from Ohio, and Looby, also from Ohio, will visit different locations in Texas to unload the animals. The organization has transported turtles in the past.
Scientists and volunteers load sea turtles onto a flight.
There is a book aboutASTRO OBSCURA.
The world has something to offer.
A journey through the history, culture, and places of the world of food. Order now.
Staff and volunteers from several aquariums and marine rescue facilities crowd around the tarmac after the plane lands. The pilots gently slide each box of turtles toward the cargo door and the group lines up to carry them to the vans parked nearby. Someone asks, what happened to these guys? Donna Shaver, chief of Padre Island National seashore's division of sea turtle science and recovery, says that they were found stranded on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
In the summer months in the Gulf of Maine, Cape Cod is located, the waters are warm, calm, and full of food, which is a good place to raise Kemp's ridleys, the smallest and most vulnerable sea turtle in the world. Migrating loggerheads, green sea turtles, and the occasional leatherback visit Cape Cod Bay. The turtles have to migrate out or die when the water temperatures plummet. Many lose their way and wash up on the inside edge of the hook-shaped Cape, forming what some locals call the deadly bucket.
The phenomenon is the largest stranding event in the world. The scale of sea turtle bones is new and may be a result of successful efforts to recover Kemp's ridley populations. Kate Sampson is the turtle stranding and disentanglement co-ordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and she says that the area is increasing in water temperature faster than the rest of the world. It seems like it is drawing more sea turtles.
The tip of Cape Cod is near the coastline. LightHawk made the photograph possible.
Hundreds of volunteers and staff members from the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary stand at the ready to patrol every inch of the 105 kilometer stretch of beach in the inner Cape during the winter months. The journey from rescue to rehabilitation and eventually to release is a logistically complex one. Saving each flight involves five vans, a thousand miles, four organizations, and 50 people. Other efforts to save the Kemp's ridley sea turtle from extinction might be futile without this monumental collaboration across North America's eastern seaboard.
Nancy Braun and her dog walked a stretch of Great Hollow Beach three weeks before Gisler and Looby left. Braun had a rosy cheeks and her hair was trying to escape from her fuzzy winter hat as the wind blew hard. She would raise her binoculars to look for a lump of seaweed. Braun is a volunteer with Mass Audubon and is on the lookout for turtles.
She passed small cottages in the dunes with window shutters closed tightly. The beach chairs lined the shore. Braun saw a group of people gathered around something in the distance and she ran towards them. There were four sea turtles in need of care when she arrived. Braun and the others covered the turtles with seaweed to protect them from the wind chill.
Nancy Braun, her dog, and a few other people stand watch over four stranded sea turtles on Great Hallow Beach on Cape Cod in November.
Richard Lammert is from New York. We were walking on the beach and came across the turtles. I didn't know that sea turtles came up this far. I have never seen one up close.
There was a sense of urgency among the group. Michael Weinstein said he called Mass Audubon to let them know what they found. Carol "Krill" Carson, President and founder of the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance and volunteer with Mass Audubon, said that that type of response turtle rescuers hope for is what they prioritize educating the community in addition to recruiting and training volunteers. Some people might think they should throw the turtles back into the ocean if they didn't know why they were there in the first place. Anyone can find a sea turtle on the beach. It is what that person does when they find a turtle critical.
The sea turtle rescue program was started in 1979. He says he would find a few turtles each year. The number has gone up. 1,242 turtles were found stranded on Cape Cod beaches. The second highest number on record was 1,045 in 2020. The Kemp's ridley is the most common species found and it is found in only two places in the world: a stretch of beach in Mexico and one in Texas. Kemp's ridley populations plummeted from more than 40,000 females in the late 1940s to fewer than 300 in the mid 80s due to fishing gear and harvesting of adults and eggs for human consumption. Kemp's ridleys face a wide variety of threats including habitat loss, coastal development, ship strikes, plastic waste, and climate change. With so few ridleys left, every life counts in the survival of this species, which makes the turtle rescue effort that much more important. It is all hands on deck.
The survival of this species depends on every life.
The executive director of the National Marine Life Center agrees. You hear a lot about why you are interfering. Shouldn't you let nature run its course? A lot of the threats are not under control. The population of these turtles would be much smaller if we let them die in cold weather.
Increased need for rescues is likely due to the success of ongoing conserve efforts. There are more turtles around to strand. New nest sites have been developed in Texas since the 1970s, as a result of new technological advancements and strict regulations on pollution. There are an estimated 5,500 Kemp's ridley females in Mexico and 55 in Texas. The current population is still critically low despite this being a good sign. The number of nests has fluctuated since 2009, underscoring the importance of ongoing monitoring. The Kemp's ridley nest program in Texas is led by Shaver, who says that the long game is the preservation of the species. It is so gratifying to work with people who are willing to give back to preserve and sustain this population.
Warming of the Gulf of Maine is one of the factors contributing to turtle strandings. Climate change has caused the water here to warm earlier each year and to stay warm for longer, keeping young Kemp's ridleys in the fertile shallows of Cape Cod Bay. As summer comes to a close, the temperatures of the outer Cape and the North Atlantic plunge. When fall arrives and the turtles attempt to navigate northward around the cape's hook, they hit a wall of cold and have to turn around in search of the warmer water of their southerly ocean habitats. The shallow flats inside the bay are where they encounter land instead of the ocean. If the waters inside the cape reach a consistent 50 degrees, any turtles still there will die unless they get help. There is no obvious end to the trend given the compounding factors. The increase of cold-stuns on Cape Cod is predicted to continue.
There are boxes of turtles in a room. The turtles are brought back to normal temperatures by the rehabilitaters.
The need for collaboration has been increased by that increase. The New England Aquarium built a sea turtle rehabilitation facility to meet demand. The National Marine Life Center in Massachusetts opened its doors to help with the incoming turtles, because of the limited staff and high stranding numbers in 2020.
Kemp's ridleys arrive at these facilities with pneumonia or develop the condition within the first week or two of their arrival. Turtles can show up with traumatic injuries like broken bones and cracked shells when they are too cold to swim out of the surf.
When the turtles arrive, the goal is to assess their injuries through physical exams and X-rays. The turtles are given fluids to rehydrate and antibiotics to treat infections. They work to bring the internal body temperatures of the animals back up.
Sea turtles are examined and photographed at the New England Aquarium to document their condition.
The two Massachusetts facilities can only care for turtles. Braun and the other animals that were found on Great Hollow Beach have to be transported to other aquariums and facilities to complete their rehabilitation and be ready to be released back into the Gulf of Mexico. There are 29 additional rehabilitation facilities that are prepared to take in sea turtles. Flying is the safest and fastest way to transport animals. Turtles Fly Too has a team of volunteer pilots.
On a cold, clear December day, the early morning sun peeks over the horizon as four vans pull onto the tarmac at Hanscom Field. Kate Sampson of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and a group of other turtle rescuers from the New England Aquarium pour out of their vehicles to meet with the pilots. They plan the process of getting turtles into the air as quickly as possible. That is just one phase of the process. There are a lot of details that need to be worked out, including how many turtles the rehabilitation facilities need to move, what planes are available, where the pilots are coming from, and who will be on hand for pick up.
Turtles Fly Too provides a unique service. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has the authority to move any animal that is listed as an "endangered" species, and the organization has the first and only permits in the nation to fly sea turtles. The record-breaking year of strandings made Turtles Fly Too start. Weinstein had just transported a green sea turtle to a facility in Iowa and was running an aviation parts manufacturing company. Weinstein was put in touch with the New England Aquarium's Rescue Rehab Program when cold-stranded sea turtles began washing up. Turtles Fly Too was born.
A sea turtle is in recovery at a Massachusetts rehabilitation center.
The first pilot for the organization was found by a volunteer group called Pilots N Paws. Ed Filangeri, a dentist in New York, was assigned to fly turtles from Massachusetts to Baltimore, Maryland. The two joined forces. Filangeri doesn't hesitate to cancel dental appointments because he says "the turtles can't wait" More than 350 pilots are counted among the organization's ranks, and it also provides emergency transport to other species.
Depending on the plane used, the number of drop locations, and the number of turtles on board, the flights can cost as much as $100,000. The average ticket price is $1,000 per turtle. Public contributions to Turtles Fly Too help cover that, as do airfields that waive landing fees. When Filangeri was in Virginia on Christmas Eve, he showed up in a Santa hat and the crew named each of the turtles after a flying reindeer. I thought it was funny that they were flying with a man with a white beard on Christmas Eve. We do what is necessary. Weinstein says they are the turtle movers. You can't put a value on one Kemp's life.
The turtles that were transported in December are ready to be released after months of healing from injuries, illnesses, and regaining their strength. The senior vet at the Houston Zoo says it takes time to heal chronically ill guys. On the day in March 2021, the beaches of Texas are warm and the spring sun reflects off the sand. There are boxes filled with Kemp's ridley sea turtles in the shade of a small tent. Several beachgoers line up behind strips of bright pink tape in the wind to mark a safe corridor for the turtle parade. Aquariums and rehabilitation centers work together to allow the public to attend. I hope we won't see these guys again. It would be nice to see them nest if we do it.
A Sea Life Aquarium staff member who helped rehabilitate Kemp's ridley sea turtles releases one of the animals at a Texas beach.
Staff and volunteers carefully grasp the small Kemp's ridleys just behind their front flippers and carry them down the sandy strip toward the ocean. The people gathered to watch cheer, clap, take selfies, smile, and wave as the animals complete the final leg of their strange, human-assisted migration. goodbye little one! Someone yells good luck. One bystander says that they are cute. The sea turtles seem equally enthusiastic, waving their flippers wildly as if in anticipation of the swim, as if longing for the embrace of warm water, at last, eager to once again fly beneath the waves.
One of the turtle rehabilitators says that the Kemp's is ready to go as she places him in the water. The young turtle has several fast pumps of his flippers.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
