Now climate change is coming for our sea turtles
Every year, young sea turtles migrate up the East Coast to spend the summer foraging in northerly waters.
Sometimes, they wind up in the Gulf of Maine, which stretches from Cape Cod Bay to Nova Scotia. As the weather cools, the turtles, including endangered Kemp's ridley and loggerhead turtles, begin to swim south.
A few of these turtles will run into trouble. Turtles follow the coastline as they travel, and on their way back from Maine, they eventually find their way blocked by Cape Cod, which juts out into the sea in the shape of a hook. If a turtle has commenced migrating early enough in the season, it can summon the energy to navigate around this peninsula. But come fall, the cold-blooded turtles become sluggish and unable to reach their maximum swimming speed. They become trapped in Cape Cod Bay, and may seek refuge near the seafloor, where the water is a little warmer.
"If it warms up again, they swim around some more, but then another cold front comes through and they go back down, and they're never going to get out," says Bob Prescott, director of Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary on Cape Cod, who has been rescuing stranded sea turtles since the 1970's.
Linda Balon