As many of us are thinking about diamondback terrapins, horseshoe crabs, Piping Plovers, gardening, ice cream …. it’s also time to think about sea turtles! Not the turtles that wash ashore here in the fall due to cold-stunning, but the leatherbacks, loggerheads, greens and Kemp’s ridleys that swim north to feed in the waters off southern New England, including Cape Cod, in the late spring, summer and fall.
Free swimming leatherback in Nantucket Sound. (Photo courtesy of Chris Waitkun)
This is the time of year we start to encourage anyone on the water to report sightings of live sea turtles. These sightings help us understand more about how these endangered and threatened species are using our waters and we especially urge both recreational and commercial boaters to report any turtle sightings. Wellfleet Bay’s sea turtle sighting hotline for boaters is ready to take reports by phone at 1-888-SEA-TURT or online at our website, seaturtlesightings.org. No sea turtles have been reported yet, but some may already be here. If you are a boater, please look at the photos on the website of our four species, which helps create a mental “search image” of what the sea turtles may look like in the water. Also, please pass on this info to boating and fishing friends.
Wellfleet Bay staff respond to dead, stranded sea turtles all summer and fall, well before the cold-stun season starts. Last summer we responded to two dead, boat-struck leatherbacks in September, which turned out to have been tagged with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags. Thanks to these tags, we quickly learned that one turtle had been tagged at Fishing Pond in eastern Trinidad as she nested in 2010 and 2012.
It took us until April of this year to learn more about the second boat-struck leatherback—and it’s quite a story.
Female leatherback at a nesting beach in Anguilla, one of three northern Caribbean sites where she nested in 2009 – seven years before her fatal visit to New England waters. (Photo courtesy of Stuart Wynne, Department of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Government of Anguilla).
She was tagged while nesting on Anguilla, then monitored again nesting on beaches in St. Maarten and St. Croix – all in the 2009 nesting season. That’s nesting on three different islands in one season!
The number of nesting leatherbacks in the northern Caribbean is small, relative to numbers on Trinidad and South America, so this story is very interesting to Caribbean sea turtle researchers, and we’re working with them on a publication. One of these researchers is Dr. Stuart Wynne, Deputy Director of the Department of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Government of Anguilla, who was part of the initial tagging team. He sent us this photo of the female leatherback after she came ashore to lay her eggs on the beach in Anguilla.
The female leatherback returning to the ocean after she nested on Anguilla in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Stuart Wynne, Department of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Government of Anguilla).
It’s so sad to compare Dr. Wynne’s photos to ours of the same female washed ashore, dead, on Nantucket. It’s especially sad to think of these endangered reproductive female leatherbacks being killed by boats in our waters.
The boat-struck Caribbean-nesting leatherback washed ashore on Nantucket in September of 2016 (Photo courtesy of Olivia Bourque).
Through the website and other outreach, Wellfleet Bay staff are focusing even more effort on boater awareness to avoid sea turtle strikes. So, should you find yourself on the water in the weeks ahead, please keep an eye out for these wonderful animals and report them to seaturtlesightings.org.
Boaters are encouraged to report all sea turtle sightings at seaturtlesightings.org
This post was contributed by Wellfleet Bay sea turtle researcher Karen Dourdeville who oversees the seaturtlesightings.org website. She also responds to sea turtle strandings.
This ending is truly heartbreaking.