This time of year, volunteers up and down Cape Cod visit blustery beaches in search of stranded sea turtles. Day or night, sunny or stormy, volunteers stroll the wrack line just after a high tide to look for cold-stunned sea turtles. This is how a rescued sea turtle starts its road to recovery.

Rescued green sea turtle at the Aquarium's Animal Care Center

The journey of this rescued sea turtle started on a chilly beach on Cape Cod. The Massachusetts Audubon Society of Wellfleet Bay organizes fleets of volunteers to comb the beaches in search of hypothermic turtles—too weak and too late to migrate south to warmer waters. If left on the beach, they would likely die of hypothermia.

Beach walkers scan the wrack line for turtles tossed up on the beach by winds and waves

Volunteers must carefully pick through detritus like this for sea turtles tangled in the sea grasses

Bundling up for a walk on the beach

If a turtle is found on the beach, the volunteers carefully pluck the animal from the sand or sea grass and transport it to Mass. Audubon in a cardboard box padded with towels.

Next stop: Mass. Audubon

This is a guest post from Aquarium staffer Laura Dill. Laura works in the Development office and helps to raise money to support Aquarium programs, like the Marine Animal Rescue Program. Last fall, she expanded her mission to help marine animals to include her off-time! (Learn more about those efforts here, here and here.) Follow along below as she returns to the beaches of Cape Cod to search for cold-stunned sea turtles.

One of my favorite times of the year is when the leaves start falling and the calendar turns to November. Not only to have turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie but to spend time walking through bitter winds on the beaches of the Cape in search of stranded sea turtles.


Laura arrives at Mass. Audubon in Wellfleet. This is where rescued cold-stunned turtles get their intake exams.

Last Saturday day morning, I woke up to a warm sunny day in Brewster which is usually a sign that sea turtles will not strand. They need a combo of strong wind and wave current to catapult them on to the beach (like the nor'easter that hit soon after Sandy). The best time to walk the beach is about an hour after high tide so with high tide at 7:40am, I prepared breakfast and afterwards my sister (Elizabeth), brother-in-law (Chris) and I started putting on our rescue sea turtle gear. We never know how the ocean will welcome us to the beach so layers are the best defense. We put on the long underwear, boots, mittens and hats.


High tide line on Mayflower Beach in Dennis, a hawk scavenges for food

On this occasion we were assigned to a beach in Dennis from Mass Audubon in Wellfleet. It was a very rocky beach and at some points we were scaling rocks so the ocean wouldn’t get our feet too wet and cold. I thought with so many rocks finding a sea turtle could prove to be very difficult but we were determined. At the very end of our beach was a huge open area where a ton of seaweed and debris washed up. I saw a hawk eating something and ran up to it to see if it might be a turtle. The hawk had no desire to stop munching on his morning snack and luckily the snack was a bird that washed up. I walked the rest of the area where much of the seaweed washed up and then I saw it, a beautiful sea turtle.


Laura's sister, Elizabeth, gives you an idea of how tiny this Kemp's ridley turtle is.

The turtle was motionless but looked in perfect shape. The shell was all intact, flippers had no signs of injury and his face had no abrasions. It's so important to find them as soon as possible so predators do not get to them and they are not exposed to cold air for an extended period. We rushed him off the beach and with the sun’s heat the turtle started to show signs of life. His eyes started to open and his flippers started to move.  He was swimming in the air while we rescued him off the beach.  We then brought him to MassAudubon, careful not to warm him up too quickly as we want their internal body temperature to slowly rise.


Cold-stunned sea turtle found in Dennis

Every time I walk a beach in search of stranded turtles, I hope that if a turtle stranded that my eyes will find it. It was a very thankful moment for me to find this little Kemp’s ridley among all the rocks and seaweed.  Now this lucky sea turtle is recuperating at the New England Aquarium’s sea turtle rescue center in Quincy.


Elizabeth and her husband Chris pick up the turtle to start its rehabilitation journey.

Another thing I will be thankful for this Thanksgiving are two organizations that are giving this sea turtle his fight back to survive this crazy world, the New England Aquarium and the Massachusetts Audubon Society!

Happy Thanksgiving,
Laura M. Dill

I enjoyed reading Laura's recent guest posts (read here) on our blog. From her own experience as a volunteer beach walker she gave a great description of what it's like to rescue a stranded turtle.

I searched around to see if I could find any more information on beach rescues and I found the video below, which shows our partners at the Mass Audubon at Wellfleet Bay doing what they do best—rescuing endangered sea turtles!


Cape Cast via Cape Cod Times

Early this season, I had the opportunity to go to the Cape to do a night walk with Bob Prescott, the director of the Wellfleet Audubon that you met in the video above. As Laura stated in her blog, beach walks happen when the tide is high—even if that's in the middle of the night! Luckily I had it easy on the night I accompanied Bob as the high tide was at approximately 10:30 pm.

I took the photo on left of my car gauges just before I got out to meet Bob. While the temp says 44 degrees the wind chill was much colder. Nothing like the late season temps that the Wellfleet staff endure in order to locate these chilly little turtles. The photo on the right shows a cold desolate beach parking lot with its hibernating docks.


In the photo below on the left Bob takes a quick water temperature reading. The light from my camera flash is deceiving, if you look closely Bob is using his flashlight to read the thermometer. In the second photo Bob records the water temp and other environmental conditions before we begin our search.


About two minutes after I took these photos, I went back to the car to put on my rain pants and boots and accidentally knocked my 35mm Nikon camera off the roof of my car and sent it smashing down on the blacktop. I know... can you imagine such a thing?! I couldn't believe it myself. I spent a few minutes trying to get it to work again while Bob finished up, but to no avail. My hopes of capturing our night walk on film were eliminated with a simple clumsy action. Duty called so I left the camera in the car and headed out to search for sea turtles.

Before I'd left the house, I took a few photos of a special tool Bob and I tried out for the fist time that night. Our new tool was a night vision scope. Not just any night vision scope, a top of the line scope donated by best selling author Patricia Cornwell. Some of you may remember that Patricia attended our sea turtle release this past summer. I think she caught the sea turtle "bug" while holding one of the turtles for me while I performed a repair job on the satellite tag attachment (she posted photos of the event on her facebook page). Patricia is an animal advocate and gave us this piece of equipment to help locate sea turtles on the nighttime beach walks. How great is that!

In the photo below, Patricia Cornwell and Dr. Julie Cavin prepare to release one of the satellite tagged sea turtles. This photo was taken at the release in the summer of 2010.


The photo on the left is of the night vision scope, the photo on the right shows the scope and the directions - which I was reading as a refresher before my walk with Bob. This scope is incredible, it is difficult to describe just how clear you can see in complete darkness. The Scope is still down on the Cape but once I get it back I'll take some night time photos through the lens so you can see just how amazing this really is.


We never found any turtles on my night walk, which was long and cold. Bob is a long time colleague and is a brilliant naturalist and biologist, I kept him busy and passed the time peppering him with questions about Cape Cod natural history (he was a great sport!). We covered three beaches that night and by the time I got home and took a hot shower to warm up it was after 2:00 am. I then did what any rational photographer would do at that hour, I made a cup of tea and worked on my camera. I had it fixed by 3:00 am and then slept like a log.

All in a day's work when you're saving endangered species...

- Connie

This is a guest post from Aquarium staffer Laura Dill. Laura works in the Development office and helps to raise money to support programs like the Marine Animal Rescue Program. This fall, she expanded her mission to help marine animals to her off-time! Here’s Part Two of her story about volunteering to rescue cold-stunned sea turtles from Cape Cod beaches. [In case you missed it, catch up on Part One here!]

I had plans to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family in New York City, but we would be home on Sunday. Driving back to Boston on Saturday I was exhausted. My first thought was to maybe sleep in on Sunday but my brother-in-law said the turtles need our help. I called for my beach assignment which was Brewster and I found out high tide was 4:15 a.m. So after getting home from NYC at 10 p.m., I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to drive to the Cape. To my happy surprise, my brother-in-law Chris wanted to come along.


Chris, a new and enthusiastic turtle volunteer

We parked at Point of Rocks road and got our gear in hand. I walked the high tide mark and Chris walked where were the waves were hitting the beach. Ten minutes into our search, I found a turtle. This time, its shell was perfect. I yelled there was a turtle and Chris quickly ran over and we placed the towel on the beach and gently placed the turtle on top. We walked it over to my car and placed it into the banana box the Audubon gave me a week earlier. He was safe and out of the elements.



A stranded Kemp's ridley sea turtle just before being rescued from a Cape Cod beach

We walked the rest of the beach we were assigned and went back to the car. We bumped into another volunteer that found 3 more turtles—one green and two Kemp’s ridley sea turtles. We called Dennis from the Audubon and he came to pick up our turtles. He did a little triage and told us three of the four turtles were alive and would likely be sent to the Aquarium's Animal Care Center for treatment. (One of the three turtles the other volunteer found was found upside down, a very bad sign.)

I’m not heading out to the beaches anymore this winter. As the days get even colder, there is a smaller chance turtles will be found alive. But I’m already looking forward to next November so I can walk the Cape Cod beaches and search for turtles again.