Dr. Leslie Neville holds a sea turtle in the process of being rehabilitated at the New England Aquarium. (Courtesy photos)
For the past 15 years, the New England Aquarium has been involved in the annual rescue and rehabilitation of a variety of sea turtles. Primarily, the aquarium works with the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, the most endangered sea turtle in the world. However, it also assists other threatened species, like Green and Loggerhead turtles. In past years, the aquarium aided, on average, 25 to 100 sea turtles annually. This season those numbers were shattered when the aquarium had 242 sea turtles come through its doors. Harvard resident Dr. Leslie Neville, a veterinarian at Shepherd Veterinary Clinic in Boxborough, is one of those who helped with the turtle rescue.
Neville has a longstanding role in the sea turtle rewarming project at New England Aquarium. She graduated from Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine in 1993, and says she began volunteering in the rescue-rehab program at the aquarium in 1999. After taking a month-long Aqua Vet program in Woods Hole, Mass., she decided to apply for, and was accepted to, the internship program at the aquarium.
“I was a veterinary intern there from 2001 to 2003 and then stayed on as a full- and then part-time associate until 2005,” she says. “For the past few years, I have filled in when one of the vets is away, and I usually work at the aquarium once or twice a month, occasionally more, depending on their need.”
This year, the need has been great
Every year, during the months of November and December, Neville and the staff at New England Aquarium are prepared to treat cold-stunned or hypothermic sea turtles that become stranded on the beaches of Cape Cod. Because sea turtles are cold blooded, they rely on warmer waters as their primary heat source. The geographic “hook” of the Cape causes some turtles to become disoriented. They are unable to find their way out from inlet shores, and they get trapped in the winter months when waters become brisk and cold. Strong winds eventually push the immobile turtles to shore, where they become cold-stunned and float to the surface. Their overexposure to the frigid temperatures leads to hypothermia, which causes a decreased heart rate, decreased circulation, and lethargy. In some cases, they may suffer from shock, pneumonia, or serious injury. Fortunately, even turtles with temperatures in the low- to mid-40s can come into the aquarium with a heart rate as low as one beat per minute and still be rewarmed.
The majority of the turtles that are rescued and brought to the facility are 2- to 12-pound juvenile Kemp-Ridleys. Optimally, the aquarium’s tanks are designed to hold around 100 small turtles. This year, the massive influx in larger varieties and the increase in rescued turtles was an unexpected phenomenon.
“During the course of a season we mainly rehab smaller Kemp-Ridley turtles,” says Neville. “We may see five or so Loggerheads. This season we have had a hundred.”
These beefy, brown-colored adolescents weigh 50 or more pounds, on average, and rapidly fill the tanks at the aquarium’s state-of-the-art rehab facility in Quincy. The increased number of hypothermic Loggerheads has aquarium officials baffled. They have no concrete scientific data to explain the rise, and because of the increased workload, no time to obtain the data.
Dr. Neville and an assistant examine a sea turtle at the New England Aquarium.
To help ease the strain, aquarium officials have reached out to marine facilities and aquariums along the East Coast. Stabilized sea turtles have been transferred to Virginia, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and Maine. Many of the turtles were transported by biologists, nonprofit rescue groups, and on donated flights from Lighthawk, a network of private pilots who help move endangered wildlife throughout the United States. The turtles will stay in their temporary homes until their rehabilitation is complete and, ideally, will then be returned to their natural habitat.
The coast of Massachusetts is the only place in the world known to have this number of hypothermic sea turtles beach each year, according to Neville. The practice of sea-turtle rescue is so commonplace in the state that the New England Aquarium has a Marine Animal Hotline, and many organizations, including Massachusetts Audubon, have training programs for volunteer beach walkers. Training involves the study of currents, winds, and tides to help lead walkers to the stranded creatures on Cape Cod beaches.
New England Aquarium relies heavily on volunteers to help with the annual task of rescue and rewarming. Aquarium spokesperson Tony LaCasse told the Press, “The preservation of the delicate balance of the oceanic ecosystem is dependent on the rescue of these turtles. Since they are youngsters, they are the future of the sea turtle population.” He continued, “We have an excellent head veterinarian. However, volunteers like Dr. Neville are essential to the survival of the species. She loves marine wildlife. When you see her and the other volunteers at the shipyard at 4 a.m. on multiple mornings, you know they are passionate about these animals. Their work is meaningful and clearly successful. We are fortunate to save 90 percent of the turtles that come to us.”
