"Shell Shocked," the story of last year's epic cold-stunned turtle season, airs nationally on Sea Rescue this Saturday, January 16. See it locally at 10 a.m. on WCVB Channel 5. 

The New England Aquarium and Mass Audubon are featured in Saturday's (January 16) episode of Sea Rescue™. This special broadcast is Sea Rescue’s 100th original episode and relives the record-breaking turtle cold-stunning event in Massachusetts from November 2014 to January 2015. Hundreds of turtles were flown south for rehabilitation.

Rescued turtles start their journey to recovery. A clip from Sea Rescue's 100th episode called "Shell Shocked," airing Saturday at 10 a.m.

Every year a number of turtles strand on the coast of New England because of frigid water temperatures, but no one expected the 2014 – 2015 season would shatter all previous records. Residents of Cape Cod began seeing high numbers of cold stunned Kemp’s ridley turtles, and every day for six weeks teams from Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary combed the beaches in heavy, freezing winds.  The numbers soon became overwhelming; on one day alone Mass Audubon rescued a staggering 148 cold stun turtles and within weeks over 1,000 turtles and every square inch of floor space was taken up with new patients.

Hundreds of turtles were triaged and cared for at the Aquarium's Animal Care Center in Quincy.

The Mass Audubon “first responders” transported sick turtles to our Animal Care Center in Quincy, Mass., for acute care, involving slowly rewarming the turtles over several days and treating them with antibiotic and antifungal to boast immune systems and fend off infection. They were also treated for dehydration, malnutrition, metabolic problems, infections, and any injuries. Once the patients were stabilized, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) coordinated moving hundreds of turtles to 21 facilities around the country for long term rehab.

Working with the United States Coast Guard and Florida Fish and Wildlife (FWC), the turtles found temporary homes throughout the East and Gulf Coasts, and as far away as Texas. Long term rehab included keeping them in clean, warm water and continuing medications until the turtles slowly began to respond to treatment. All totaled over 730 turtles were recovered, rehabilitated, and began their second chance at life, seven times the average number treated.  

More than 700 turtles are swimming in the ocean today after last year's epic rescues.

The massive sea turtle stranding season continues to pique the interest of folks around the country.

A rescued sea turtle awaits its entrance exam

Here are a couple national news stories that you may have missed.

• Watch NBC Nightly News
• Watch CBS Evening News
• Read New York Times

For the latest from the front lines of sea turtle rehabilitation, follow the Rescue Blog.

Cape Cod is in the midst of an unprecedented sea turtle stranding season. This media release pertains to the transport of turtles by the US Coast Guard.  See more pictures of sea turtle rescue season in our Animal Care Facility on the Rescue Blog.

To disperse a seeming tidal wave of stranded sea turtles washing up on Cape Cod, the New England Aquarium arranged for 243 re-warmed Kemp’s Ridley and green sea turtles to be flown  to Florida and North Carolina Tuesday.

A rescued Kemp's ridley sea turtle in treatment at the Aquarium's Animal Care Center in Quincy, Mass.

Before dawn, 193 critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles were netted from the pools of the Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy, MA, loaded into padded boxes and transported to Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod where a Coast Guard plane transported the 3-10 pound, black shelled turtles to Orlando where they were distributed to seven marine animal rehab facilities in north and central Florida. At mid-morning, 50 Kemp’s and green sea turtles were also pulled and driven to suburban Norwood Airport where a private pilot flew them to North Carolina for distribution to the aquariums there. These turtles will spend at least a couple of months in the various rehab settings before being released back into  the ocean.

The flights temporarily freed up critical tank space at the Aquarium’s hospital for more turtles that have been rescued and have been waiting at the Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary at Wellfleet Bay. Within two hours of the second flight departing Massachusetts, 50 more sea turtles were transferred to the sea turtle hospital from the Outer Cape nature center. The turtles remaining at the Audubon sanctuary have been under the care of an Aquarium veterinarian on site. After a week of nearly a hundred turtles washing up daily, Tuesday’s mild weather gave rescuers a break as just a few live animals were found.

Here's a quick look at a rescued sea turtle's journey to the Aquarium's Animal Care Center.




Only three weeks into the eight week long sea turtle stranding season, 2014 has already smashed  prior records into oblivion. Since November 3, Mass Audubon had recovered 976 live and dead sea turtles. Just over 600 of those turtles arrived alive. Including today’s flights, 328 turtles have been re-warmed, stabilized and  transported to rehab facilities in Georgia, North and South Carolina,  Florida, Pennsylvania and  Massachusetts. 180 turtles are in residence at the Quincy sea turtle hospital as of Tuesday night and about 100 turtles remain in Wellfleet. The previous record for live turtles treated during a season was 242, and the average over the past decade was about 90! There are 4-5 weeks remaining in the stranding season, and regional sea turtle biologists are in disbelief and amazement at the number of cold-stunned juvenile sea turtles that have been recovered and possibly remain in Cape Cod Bay.

The operational challenges have been immense for both the Aquarium and Mass Audubon, but the outpouring of support and help from trained volunteers to other marine rehab organizations to NOAA has been tremendous.

A rescued sea turtle is prepared for its intake exam at the Aquarium's Animal Care Center in Quincy, MA

This historic and daunting stranding event has a possible silver lining. If these endangered turtles did not strand, they would die, but also the unprecedented number is a probable indicator that high percentages of the hatchling classes over the last two to five years have survived, and that should aid in the slow recovery of the most endangered sea turtle population in the world.

The weather recipe for a mass stranding of sea turtles on Cape Cod starts with chilling water temperatures to 50 degrees, add steady northwest winds over a couple of days and then whisk in wind speeds in excess of 20 miles per hour, creating wave heights that can carry the largely inert, endangered marine reptiles ashore. This past weekend, the weather chef got carried away as forty-five live sea turtles were rescued on the beaches of six Cape Cod Bay towns from Dennis to Truro.

A recent arrival to the Aquarium's sea turtle rescue hospital

On Saturday, seventeen critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles were rescued by the dedicated staff and volunteers of Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and were then transported to the New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy, MA, for life saving re-warming and treatment of other medical problems. On Sunday, twenty-eight more live and lucky sea turtles were rescued on the Cape. That number was the highest for a single day since 1999.

When the turtles first arrive they are given subcutaneous fluid depending on what their bloodwork shows.

Instinctively, we know that marine animal strandings are an undesirable and life threatening event, particularly for dolphins, pilot whales and large whales. Ironically, on Cape Cod in November, stranding for a sea turtle is its only life saving option. Sea turtles do not intentionally strand, but with body temperatures in the low 50’s and high 40’s, these sea turtles no longer have the ability to migrate south. If they fail to wash up, they will eventually die from hypothermia as water temperatures drop into the 30’s and low 40’s in late November and December.

A picture from Mass Audubon's Facebook page documenting their record day of intake

Strangely enough, the cutting, northwest winds of late autumn that cruelly remind New Englanders of the oncoming winter are potentially life-saving for sea turtles. Monday’s warming weather with the wind switching from the southwest with heavy gusts in excess of 40 miles per hour is dangerous for the remaining, floating sea turtles as it could blow many of them out of Cape Cod Bay into the open ocean. Tuesday and Wednesday are more favorable for the sea turtles as northwest winds are predicted to resume as we cool down again.

Volunteers with Mass Audubon walk blustery Cape Cod beaches like this one looking for stranded sea turtles

Over 20 years, the New England Aquarium and Mass Audubon have rescued, rehabilitated and released more than 1000 endangered and threatened sea turtles.

Head over to the Rescue Blog for more about sea turtle stranding:

• Meet the first arrivals of the 2014 season
• See some of the sea turtle hospital upgrades that happened during the summer
• Here's a very cool sea turtle that's helping us understand more about these oceanic animals
• That time we helped rescue a giant leatherback sea turtle
• Find out why we do what we do for endangered sea turtles

November is the beginning of the sea turtle stranding season on Cape Cod, and this weekend nine critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles washed up on Outer Cape beaches, almost all in Eastham. The 4-9-pound black-shelled turtles were rescued by the dedicated staff and volunteers from the Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary at Wellfleet Bay. The turtles were then transported to the New England’s Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy, MA.

See more pictures of these first turtles to arrive at the sea turtle hospital on the Rescue Blog!

An endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle covered in algae is evaluated at in-take at the New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy, MA. The turtle stranded in Eastham on Cape Cod over the weekend due to prolonged hypothermia.

Most of the lethargic turtles were covered with accumulated algae from lack of activity due to low body temperatures in the mid-50’s. Since sea turtle are reptiles and cold-blooded, they assume the water temperature around them. Their preferred body temperature is in the 70’s, and Aquarium biologists and veterinarians will slowly re-warm the turtles about 5 degrees per day over the next three days.

Once re-warmed, many of the turtles will have other medical problems due to the slow chilling and minimal eating over the last several weeks. Malnutrition, pneumonia, blood disorders and orthopedic issues are all common problems that require prolonged rehab of anywhere from 3 to 10 months. 85 to 90% of the live rescued turtle survive and are released back into the wild, usually in the warm waters off of Florida or Georgia over the winter.

A slowly re-warming sea turtle that stranded on Cape Cod over the weekend due to hypothermia gets a little physical therapy with a supervised swim at New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy.

Kemp’s ridleys are the most endangered sea turtle in the world. As juveniles, they migrate annually to the waters off of Cape Cod to feed on crabs. Many of the young animals end up in Cape Cod Bay on the north side of this huge, backward L shaped peninsula. Many of the young animals are unable to figure out the tricky navigation out of the bay and slowly become hypothermic as sea temperatures slowly decline during the autumn. Wave activity churned up by northwest winds washes the inert turtles ashore.

In an average year, 90 to 100 sea turtles of three different species will strand on Cape Cod and the Islands due to cold stunning. The record was 242 in 2012. So far, this year 11 Kemp’s ridleys have stranded with the first arriving from Martha’s Vineyard November 3. The season could last until mid-December depending on weather.

Over 20 years, the New England Aquarium and Mass Audubon at Wellfleet Bay have rescued, rehabilitated and released more than 1000 endangered and threatened sea turtles.

If someone finds a turtle, please call Mass Audubon at Wellfleet Bay at 508-349-2615.