Hundreds of sea turtles are stranded in Cape Cod each year. An ‘amazing network’ has mobilized to help

Massachusetts beaches have become a ‘hotspot for mass stranding of sea turtles’, so an annual rescue effort has grown

Sea turtle #471 gasped audibly, as veterinarian Kathy Tuxbury palpated the surgical scar on the animal’s left flipper.

The turtle – lovingly renamed “Lucky” by the huge network of conservationists, interns and volunteers working to save its life – is one of the last patients of the year at the New England Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital, waiting to be returned to the ocean.

Lucky has been the beneficiary of what has become a massive, annual rescue effort to save hundreds of endangered sea turtles who get lured into Cape Cod’s warming waters every summer, only to be trapped on frigid beaches when ocean currents turn cold in November and December. The annual number of turtles found stranded like this has grown tenfold since the early 2000s, due at least in part to global heating, scientists say.

Lucky – still too young for experts to tell if it’s a male or a female – was one of 473 turtles found “cold-stunned” on the Cape’s beaches last November and December. Like the others, the animal was in a state of extreme hypothermia when it arrived at the hospital in a banana box on the chilly morning of 1 December. The 18-inch-long, greenish-gray Kemp’s ridley turtle has been at the hospital ever since, undergoing rehabilitation.

The turtle laid still on the exam table. Only the folds of skin under its neck rippled with each gasping breath, as Tuxbury, the aquarium’s senior veterinarian, carefully probed several lumpy spots on its shoulders.

“471 is in good shape,” she declared, noting that Lucky would still have to undergo a pre-release evaluation before being released back to the sea to rejoin the annual migration of the endangered species in the last days of August or early September.

“If the animal is still stable and doing well after 30 days off antibiotics, then we’re good to go,” she said.

Since the early 2000s, the number of young sea turtles washing up on Cape Cod’s beaches has jumped from about 50 a year to close to 500.

The Gulf of Maine, which stretches most of the length of New England, is one of the most rapidly warming water bodies in the world, said Kara Dodge, a research scientist for the aquarium who has spent the last 20 years studying the little-known lives of New England sea turtles. The area offers a late summer paradise for all kinds of sea creatures.

“These turtles are very similar to what we call ‘snowbirds’ here in New England, where they come and spend the summer in Cape Cod,” said Dodge. As the waters are staying warmer, longer, it may be that more and more of them are coming. But the north side of the Cape Cod Peninsula, which reaches 65 miles out into the ocean, serves as a hook-shaped barrier where turtles can easily get stuck.

“If you look at it on a map, it’s a natural, geographic trap,” Dodge said.