Loggerhead sea turtles that were stranded on Cape Cod beaches in 2021 and 2022 are still alive and doing well in New England waters.
The New England Aquarium is using new technology to track loggerheads, and it's providing some valuable information. In 2021, 14 loggerheads that were being treated at the aquarium's sea turtle hospital in Quincy had tracking devices surgically implanted in them. The new devices are designed to provide tracking data for years, as opposed to previous external devices that generally lasted from six months to a year.
The transmitters ping listening stations, much like an E-ZPass system, when an animal passes by.
Dr. Charles Innis, a senior scientist and veterinarian at the aquarium tells CAI the new information is crucial to understanding the loggerheads' habits.
"What we didn't know in the past is whether they were only coming through here once transiently as part of their growth stage or if they are actually using this habitat repeatedly. And so this new evidence that we have is showing that they are actually going south in the winter but then coming back to Massachusetts waters each summer after they are released," Innis said.
Innis says the new data comes as the number of loggerheads and other turtle species has increased greatly in local waters, perhaps due to a warming ocean caused by climate change.
"Prior to 2010 on the Cape, there would be dozens of turtles stranded per year and we would be hospitalizing dozens of turtles. But since 2010 the number has increased into the hundreds. This past year we hospitalized over 500 turtles," Innis said.
The New England Aquarium has been engaged in sea turtle rescue, rehabilitation, and research for more than 30 years. The transmitters were implanted in the turtles under a federal permit. Each year, many turtles become stranded on Cape Cod beaches when temperatures begin to drop in the fall and winter causing the turtles to become cold-stunned.
“These acoustic transmitters are telling us that rehabilitated sea turtles can survive beyond that first year, and they are showing up in well-established feeding areas. That gives us confidence in their ability to reintegrate into the wild population,” said Dr. Kara Dodge, research scientist in the Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.
A next step for the aquarium is to see if Kemp's ridley and green sea turtles show the same behavior as loggerheads.
