This week the New England Aquarium released 10 rehabilitated sea turtles back into the waters of Cape Cod. It was the earliest date ever to release the turtles because of rising surface temperatures.
Rescue and rehabilitation manager Adam Kennedy showed us how they care for the reptiles at the sea turtle hospital in Quincy earlier in the day.
After seven months of rehabilitation, a loggerhead named Cayenne was ready to be released back into the Atlantic Ocean.
Kennedy said six of the 10 sea turtles released were outfitted with transmitters so they can track where they go.
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"We're hoping for at least three months and anything longer will be great. And then at some point as the turtle grows, the tag will fall off," he said.
The cold-stunned turtles all washed up on the shores of Cape Cod last winter.
Ten years ago, this hospital was seeing 40 to 50 sea turtles a year. Now they're averaging over 500 each season.
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The Gulf of Maine, which stretches from Cape Cod Bay up to Nova Scotia is one of the fastest warming bodies of ocean surface water on earth. Last year, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute said it was the highest average temperature ever recorded at 54 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 4 degrees higher than normal.
Those warmer waters are ideal for sea turtles and the food they eat, and that warming trend includes the waters on the outer cape.
They released the latest group of sea turtles on June 29, beating last year's record for release on June 30.
“Nantucket Sound really warmed up quickly. So we were kind of taken aback at how quickly we probably might have been able to do it last week. But just logistically speaking, we weren't ready to go," said Kennedy
The turtles are loaded up in a large SUV and driven down to West Dennis Beach on Cape Cod.
A crowd of people showed up to see the turtles off, many of them rescuers with the Mass Audubon Society.
"It was special. I wasn’t informed that it was going to be one of my turtles. Really surprised me that it was the one that I rescued," said John Ogas.
Ogas and his wife Sandy found one of the loggerhead turtles near death on point-of-rocks beach in Brewster last winter.
"The waters are warmer and they don’t realize the seasons are changing and the weather is dropping. And they stay longer and suddenly it’s too late for them to leave," said Ogas.
Kennedy said West Dennis is a great place to release the turtles into Nantucket Sound so that way they have that nice clean shot down south.
With the warming waters, he expects the number of sea turtles coming into this hospital to increase in the coming years.
"I mean when I first started almost 20 years ago, we weren't doing these releases until August and late August for Nantucket Sound to be warm enough. And now here we are in June doing the same thing," he said.
