Volunteers Picking Up Cold-Stunned Turtles

Courtesy of the New England Aquarium.

WELLFLEET – Cold-stunned turtle season has started on Cape Cod.

Sea turtles routinely get trapped on Cape Cod Bay-side beaches during the winter, which is where the more-than-200 volunteers come in at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

Eamon Caffrey, the cold-stunned turtle program coordinator, says the first of the season washed up on November 13th.

Caffrey says they’ve counted over 200 turtles annually in the last decade. He points to several causes for this phenomenon.

“Climate change definitely has a big part of it, probably why the numbers are increasing, because the Gulf of Maine is getting warmer. More turtles are here during the summer, which means more turtles are getting stuck in the winter. Also, various conservation efforts are increasing the turtle population, which means there’s more juvenile turtles in the system to then get stunned later in the winter. So it’s a lot of questions, there’s not really one exact answer,” Caffrey said.

In the 50-year history of the program, Caffrey says an estimated 9,000 turtles have been rescued.

The Sanctuary coordinates with the New England Aquarium in Quincy and the National Marine Life Center in Buzzards Bay. The turtles mostly get transported to the Southern U.S. to be released in warmer waters. Some of them are released over the summer at West Dennis Beach.

The hotline for reporting cold-stunned sea turtles is 508-349-2615. Signs are also posted at bayside beaches.