Beach patrols will begin this month across Atlantic Canada in an effort to find and rescue endangered sea turtles that may become stranded in the fall due to exposure to cold waters.
The initiative was started in 2016 by the Canadian Sea Turtle Network after smaller, hard-shelled sea turtles that typically prefer warmer waters began washing up along the coastline of the Bay of Fundy between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
“We started to understand that this might be not just a sporadic occurrence, but maybe an annual occurrence,” said Kathleen Martin, executive director of the network that’s based in Halifax, N.S.
Due to the trend of warming ocean waters, Martin expects to see several turtle species begin pushing further and further north. She said sea turtles can be found along various coastlines across Atlantic Canada, which is why more volunteers are needed to keep an eye out for them.
A turtle’s body temperature is dependent on the water around them, Martin said, and if the water becomes too frigid, they can become “cold-stunned” from hypothermia and muscle stiffening, and lose the ability to swim. She said it’s important that people who find the turtles washed ashore do not put them back in the water, as the cold waters would likely kill them.
“If we can get them soon enough, we can rehabilitate them and then put them in warmer waters,” said Martin.
“If they aren’t found soon enough, they will die. And so we then want to be able to collect those animals and learn from the animals that we’ve lost as well.”
Searching for stranded turtles
The charitable organization says volunteers are asked to walk along beaches or segments of a coastline at least once a week to search for stranded turtles.
Maria Lisa Polegatto of Sydney regularly checks for turtles during her walks along Belfry Beach in Cape Breton. She said volunteers should call the network for advice if they find a turtle.
“Basically you would walk the shoreline and keep an eye out for anything that looks unusual, or even the small ones might be tangled in some of the seaweed by the time they get washed in. So you’re almost looking for things that might look like rocks.”
Looking for volunteers
Volunteers are also being used to help identify where sea turtles are being found and how many of them might be landing in Atlantic Canada.
The network is seeking volunteers in coastal communities across the Atlantic provinces, Martin said.
“We actually had turtles in the Magdalen Islands. We had a small Kemp’s ridley turtle that washed up there surprisingly in the winter last year. We would not have expected to find a hard-shell sea turtle there that far into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.”
