Axolotl and Echidna, two of six critically endangered Atlantic ridley turtles, were released Thursday evening at Tiana Beach in Hampton Bays after months of rehabilitation by the Riverhead-based nonprofit NY Marine Rescue Center. (Photo credit: Melissa Azofeifa)
With the end of summer, the release season for rehabilitated animals at the New York Marine Rescue Center also ends.
On Thursday night, the organization held its final public release of the season, with six critically endangered Atlantic ridley turtles swimming away from Tiana Beach in Hampton Bays to the cheers of hundreds of spectators.
The Riverhead-based nonprofit cares for stranded or injured “sea turtles, seals, small cetaceans (dolphins and porpoises) in New York State,” according to its website. This summer, they released an estimated 60 animals back into the wild — including sea turtles and seals — according to Maxine Montello, the nonprofit’s rescue program director.
The six turtles all stranded during the cold snap season, which the National Aquarium says begins in late fall when water temperatures drop below 10 degrees. Ms Montello described the malaise as “a phenomenon similar to hypothermia.”
“Because (the turtles) are cold-blooded, they can’t regulate their own body temperature,” she said. “They’re here all summer, and then it turns into fall and winter pretty quickly, so they don’t get the signal from the environment to move on. So they stay here and are constantly exposed to this rapid drop in temperature. They become weakened and float on the surface.”
From November to early January, the organization searches the region’s beaches for sea turtles suffering from hypothermia, Ms. Montello said.
“Many of them have a heart rate of less than one beat per minute, normally it’s about 32 beats per minute,” Ms Montello said. “They also don’t breathe on their own, so they have to be intubated. They’re extremely dehydrated because they haven’t eaten or drunk anything, and so we need about eight to nine months to rehabilitate them, get them gaining weight, get their shells back in order – some of them have shell damage when we see them – and be able to release them back into the wild.”
All six turtles were between 3 and 5 years old. When they arrived at the rehabilitation facility, each one was named after different animals, Ms. Montello said.
“That’s probably the best part of the job for the team, the naming,” Ms. Montello said. “We always have a new naming theme, and this year it was fun to name animals after animals.”
The turtles are named Axolotl, Echidna, Manta Ray, Sunfish, Ringed Plover and Cuttlefish. Volunteers in three groups of two released the six turtles.
Some released sea turtles have satellite transmitters attached to their shells so their locations can be tracked on a map on the NYMRC website. But Atlantic ridley turtles have spiny shells, making attaching the transmitters difficult. Instead, Ms. Montello explained, they receive flipper transmitters and microchips under their skin.
“All of this is great for tracking. If the animal is found again, for example because it’s stranded or someone has seen it nesting on the beach, they can look at the numbers and report them. With those numbers they can call any sea turtle rehabilitation facility or network.
After their release, the hope is that the turtles will migrate south toward warmer waters, Ms Montello said.
“We are a small nonprofit organization and all of our donations come from the general public. We are happy to have the support here and for everyone to be able to come here and see these animals being returned to the wild. Any donation, big or small, really helps the organization,” she said.
