Photo: Jay Willett/WBZ NewsRadio
QUINCY, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — The Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy, which is an extension of the New England Aquarium, is helping care for more than 200 sea turtles who have become cold stunned.
Cold stunning is a condition that affects the animals when they encounter colder than normal waters, thus leaving them stunned and lethargic. It can result in turtles losing their ability to move, putting them at risk of drowning.
The condition is like hypothermia and to counteract this, the hospital raises the sea turtles body temperatures slowly back up to 70-80 degrees in warming pools.
“Usually they’re a little cold, which makes my job a tiny bit easier so they’re not moving around as much, so you can kind of get them perfectly where you want,” said x-ray tech Nina Nahvi.
When cold stunned, the sea turtles can develop other illnesses such as pneumonia.
Specialists also work to increase the turtles’ heartbeats from a slowed 1 beat per 5 minutes back to regular levels.
Hospital director Adam Kennedy said they are now seeing an average of over 500 cold-stunned turtles annually. “When I first started a little over 20 years ago, we were in the teens,” Kennedy said.
The hospital hopes to release the hundreds of turtles in their care back into the wild, but that could take several months or even years of warming to accomplish.
Sea turtle stranding season typically occurs from November to January and according to a press release from the New England Aquarium, “Each fall and early winter, hundreds of cold-stunned sea turtles wash up on the beaches of Cape Cod.”
The press release goes on to further explain how sea turtles develop the condition saying, “Because of the rapidly changing water temperature and wind pattern, many turtles cannot escape the hook-like area of Cape Cod Bay and become hypothermic.”
Average monthly ocean temperatures along the Greater Boston area this time of year can dip down to some really cold levels, which Adam Kennedy says is a tipping point for the animals.
“As the bay approaches 50 degrees, that’s kind of that threshold where we see a lot of cold stunning happen.”
For more information on who to contact if you encounter a debilitated sea turtle in Massachusetts click here.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Jay Willett (@JayWillettWBZ) reports.