This is a media release cross posted on the Aquarium's Rescue Blog. Learn how you can support the Aquarium and its efforts to rehabilitate and protect endangered marine animals. It's been quite a year, the 164 sea turtles rescued alive this year smashes the old record of 127 set in 1999!

Anyone who finds a sea turtle on the South Shore, whether alive or appearing dead, should call the Aquarium’s Marine Animal Hotline at 617-973-5247 or contact their local animal control officer.

Hypothermic sea turtles continue to wash up in record numbers on Cape Cod. But in an unusual twist, two large loggerhead sea turtles have stranded on South Shore beaches since Monday. Today, Hull animal control officer Casey Fredette retrieved a live loggerhead from Nantasket Beach while on Monday another 40 pounder was rescued in the Humarock section of Scituate.

A loggerhead rescued from Nantasket Beach

Cold-stunned sea turtles  strand annually on Cape Cod but almost always on the southern and eastern beaches of Cape Cod Bay from Sandwich to Truro. Typically, the northwest and northeast winds of late autumn create enough wave activity to drive the floating, nearly immobile marine reptiles ashore on those windward towns. Strandings on the South Shore are very rare events, and normally are confined to the discovery of long dead, smaller turtles early in the winter.

Hardy beach walkers on Cape Cod are familiar with the drill of what to do when they encounter stranded sea turtles as they call the Mass Audubon Sanctuary at Wellfleet Bay, which is the sea turtle first responder organization for the Cape. However, for South Shore residents, this is an unusual event. Earlier in the week, well-meaning but misdirected beach walkers tried to return a hypothermic sea turtle to the frigid waters that it was trying to escape. Those finding a sea turtle on the South Shore, whether alive or appearing dead, should call the Aquarium’s Marine Animal Hotline at 617-973-5247 or contact their local animal control officer. Washed-up sea turtles with body temperatures in the 40’s and with heartbeats as low as one per minute may appear dead but can still be re-warmed and revived at the Aquarium’s off-site animal care center in the Quincy Shipyard.

The Aquarium's chief vet attends to a loggerhead sea turtle patient

Aquarium officials are puzzled by the unusual stranding locations but are asking for the public’s help in watching for more turtles on South Shore beaches. These two loggerheads were easy to see given their fairly large size and beautiful, chestnut brown shells,. However, most of the turtles that wash up are much smaller at 2 to 12 pounds and black in color, which blends in with other flotsam at the high tide line on a beach. These turtles are Kemp’s ridleys, which are the most endangered sea turtle in the world.

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

A Kemp's ridley sea turtle during a medical exam

This most strange sea turtle stranding season for many reasons marches on. This past Saturday, 13 hypothermic sea turtles were brought to Quincy from Cape Cod. That is an unusually large number for a single day this late in December. Double digit admission dates are not common and normally happen in November. Among the 13 were 9 loggerhead sea turtles. In a typical year, the Aquarium might treat 4 to 6 large loggerheads in its two month long season. The two additional South Shore loggerheads over the past 24 hours brings the total number of stranded loggerheads total to 45! The 40 to 100 pound loggerheads create a strain on available tank space at the Aquarium’s new sea turtle hospital which has a capacity of about 100 sea turtles.



74 re-warmed and stabilized sea turtles have been transported to other marine animal rescue facilities up and down the East Coast, including 35 sea turtles that were flown from Cape Cod to Florida aboard a Coast Guard plane earlier this month. To help with the overwhelming clinical demand of caring for so many sea turtles, biologists from the Virginia Aquarium, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Riverhead Foundation on Long Island and IFAW on Cape Cod have been brought in to assist.

The Aquarium welcomes financial donations to help offset the cost of such an unexpected record event. Over the past twenty years, the Aquarium in partnership with Mass Audubon has rescued, rehabbed and released over 1000 endangered sea turtles.

Marine Animal Rescue Team biologists examine a stranded leatherback turtle on a Cape Cod beach.

DENNIS AND QUINCY, MA—A 400-pound, endangered leatherback sea turtle died of complications from severe entanglement wounds at the New England Aquarium’s Animal Care Center in Quincy Sunday. It had been rescued from Crow’s Pasture Beach in Dennis late Saturday afternoon. The sub-adult female was found on  Cape Cod beach minimally responsive. The sea turtle had severe, deep, rotting wounds at the base of each of its front flippers. These are the type of injuries commonly found when sea turtles get one of their large, paddle-like flippers caught around a vertical line in the water.  Such ropes are most commonly from boat mooring lines or fixed fishing gear like lobster pots. This turtle had either freed itself or was cut out of the entanglement by a person. Unfortunately, such entanglements happen every year in the waters around Cape Cod, which abuts a major seasonal migratory route for these black, soft-shelled giants.

The New England Aquarium’s Marine Animal Rescue Team responded mid-afternoon on Saturday. They were greeted by Dennis Murley of the Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary at Wellfleet Bay. Mass Audubon provides first responder services for  stranded sea turtles on the Cape. Aquarium rescue biologists and veterinarians found the animal still alive but barely breathing on its own. The animal was thin, not reactive to people and had terrible, large flipper wounds that had dying tissue on them and were probably at least a couple of weeks old. Aquarium staff administered emergency medications and fluids. With the aid of volunteers, the town of Dennis’s natural resources and animal control staff, and biologists from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the 400-pound turtle was carried through the loose sand by 14 people to the Aquarium’s emergency vehicle.

The leatherback is examined at the Aquarium's Animal Care Center in Quincy.

It was then transported to the Aquarium’s new off-site holding and treatment facility in the Quincy Shipyard. Aquarium staff continued intensive treatment, and chief veterinarian Dr. Charles Innis and senior biologist Kerry McNally attended to the leatherback overnight.

Rescue team members give the leatherback turtle hydrotherapy.

In the early morning, the animal’s already poor vital signs deteriorated, and she passed away relatively quickly.  A necropsy later on Sunday revealed abnormality in her organs. Whether this was a result of the infections in her severe wounds was not known. Tissue samples were taken for further pathology testing.

Leatherback sea turtles are the world’s largest turtle and the largest reptile by weight. This animal at 400 pounds was not yet reproductively active. Adult leatherbacks in Massachusetts waters commonly weigh 600 to 1,000 pounds. They are seasonal visitors here arriving during the summer and early autumn to feed exclusively on sea jellies. They commonly migrate up the East Coast in late June and pass between southern Cape Cod and the Islands. The autumn migration normally begins later in September, although turtles that had traveled deep into Gulf of Maine waters do pass by southward later in the autumn.

24 rescued sea turtles, 9 baby bonnethead sharks and a school of cownose rays among first residents of new $3.7 million facility

Quincy, Mass. - November 18, 2010
The 240 by 100 foot brick industrial building was formerly used in shipbuilding, but it is now the futuristic looking home to dozens of rescued and endangered sea turtles, [Note: The number of sea turtles now convalescing in Quincy has drastically increased! Get the latest on patient counts on the Rescue Blog.] a school of cownose rays, and a nursery for nine baby bonnethead sharks. The New England Aquarium tonight will host an informal open house for trustees and donors of its new Animal Care Center in the Quincy Shipyard. The new $3.7 million facility is the new state of the art, private, offsite holding facility for the Boston aquarium.


A rescued sea turtle is examined for treatment at the Animal Care Center. Click on photo for hi-res version. (Photo: C. Leblanc)


Left: A sand tiger shark swims in a holding take.
Right: A rescued sea turtle rests on a towel while being examined.
Click on photos for hi-res versions. (Photos: C. Leblanc)

The New England Aquarium is located on Central Wharf in dense, downtown Boston where it dedicates as much space as possible for exhibit and visitor uses. There had been a desire for an off-site holding facility for rescued marine animals, animals in quarantine and for animals that were arriving for later display. After a year long search, the Aquarium came to an agreement with Quincy Shipyard owner Jay Cashman to renovate one of the old fabrication plants in the stories South Shore shipyard. Construction began in September 2009 and is still ongoing, but the new facility is nearly up to full operations with the onset of the cold stunned sea turtle stranding season on Cape Cod.

Here's some video footage of the Animal Care Center from The Boston Globe: