A growing number of sea turtles have been washing up each year on the beaches of Cape Cod. This Massachusetts peninsula is the site of the world’s largest recurring annual sea turtle stranding. The spike may be linked to warming ocean currents, which can carry more turtles into frigid Atlantic waters.
Each winter, hundreds of volunteers comb beaches on Cape Cod for sea turtles that have succumbed to hypothermia. Stunned by the cold, they can’t swim and are left to the mercy of wind and waves. The cape’s unique hooked shape, like a flexed arm pointing north, bewilders turtles compelled to migrate south to warmer waters each fall.
Critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys kempii) make up most of the turtles stranded in this region, followed by loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas).
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When volunteers first began rescuing cold-stunned sea turtles in 1979, they found “maybe a dozen” animals each season, says at the New England Aquarium in Massachusetts, which rehabilitates many of the stranded turtles. This winter, they found more than 800 dead and alive turtles on Cape Cod beaches, making it the third-busiest cold stunning season ever recorded.
“It’s basically an exponential increase,” says Dodge. Based on current trends, researchers predict that more than 1000 sea turtles will be stranded in Cape Cod annually by 2031.
This meteoric rise may be due to warmer waters and changing currents driven by climate change. “Warming of the Gulf [of Mexico] for a longer period of time allows more turtles to funnel in [to the Cape],” says at the New England Aquarium. Increasingly warm currents entice more turtles further north, and because water in the Cape is warmer later into the year, a growing number are left vulnerable if there is an abrupt shift to cold winter weather.
Climate change can also impact the intensity of storms that disrupt turtles’ journeys, the suspected cause of recent turtle strandings on beaches in the UK.
Around two-thirds of the 500 living turtles stranded this year were sent to the aquarium’s to be treated for hypothermia, injuries, dehydration and pneumonia. Treatment can last months, but most rescued turtles are released back into the ocean. “Our success rate with live turtles is over 80 per cent,” says Dodge. The currently in rehabilitation recently received pasta and noodle themed names including Fusilli, Lasagna, Udon, Couscous and Soba.
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