More than two dozen very rare Kemp's ridley sea turtles arrived in the Keys Tuesday night after being rescued from frigid waters off the New England coast.
Packed in banana boxes — perfectly sized for small turtles and already equipped with air holes — the 25 endangered young turtles were flown to Marathon, where they were greeted by staff from The Turtle Hospital. The staff weighed, measured and photographed the turtles before moving them into tanks containing a balmy 75-degree water.
" I'm happy to say all 25 passed their swim tests last night. And it didn't end there. Starting at 6 a.m. we took six of those littles in for CAT scans," said Bette Zirkelbach, manager of the nonprofit Turtle Hospital in Marathon.
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Six showed signs of additional injuries from the cold, with some suffering lung damage and others with bone infections.
Volunteers rescued the turtles along Cape Cod Bay after a blast of arctic air sent temperatures plummeting. Most Kemp's ridleys live in Gulf waters, but a smaller number inhabit the Atlantic and summer off New England before heading south to winter in warmer waters. Because climate change has warmed waters, Zerkelbach said the turtles can sometimes linger too long and become cold-stunned when waters drop below 50 degrees.
" Their metabolism slows down. They stop eating, eventually stop swimming," she said. "And what happens is they wash into shore. They get beat up on the rocky coast."
It happens so often that volunteers regularly patrol the coast as temperatures drop, looking for cold-stunned turtles.
"These volunteers actually comb the coastlines and rescue these little ones," Zirkelbach said.
The 25 turtles were likely between two and eight years old, considered juveniles for the long-lived turtles.
"That's just a guesstimate based on their size, but they're the kids," she said.
Kemp's ridley turtles are considered the rarest sea turtles in the world. At just 80 to 100 pounds, they are also the smallest. A Key West merchant and naturalist first discovered the turtles in the late 1800s after noticing the small turtles that turned up in the Keys were different than any he'd seen in the Bahamas, where he'd grown up. Harvard confirmed his discovery and named them for him.
Once plentiful, the population crashed beginning in the 1940s before they were added to the endangered species list in 1970. By 1985, just over 700 nests were documented, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The latest assessment of the population in 2015 found numbers had declined from the previous tally in 2009, with increasing threats from oil spills, fishing and climate change. Today, nearly all nesting occurs in Mexico, but smaller numbers still migrate up and down the Atlantic coast between winter and summer.
In the coming weeks, Zirkelbach said the sick turtles will be treated with antibiotics and nebulizers. Depending on their health, she said they could stay anywhere from a month to a year. Cold-stunning gives the turtles symptoms similar to hypothermia in humans, she said.
"They'll get an anti-fungal antibiotic. They'll also get broad spectrum antibiotics. They'll get a class four laser treatment on those joints that look like they may be developing" bone infections, she said.
Once healthy, the turtles will be released off Cape Canaveral, where nesting has been documented.
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