CUTCHOGUE, New York — During an early December cold snap, the New York Marine Rescue Center in Riverhead, New York, says it helped a record number of sea turtles who were simply stunned by cold temperatures.
On a private path, senior biologist Jill Pryor first started looking for turtles on a remote stretch of beach in Cutchogue.
“We have really long stretches of beaches so sometimes we have to walk pretty far,” Pryor said.
With laser focus, they looked for cold-stunned turtles, who around this time of year after a longer than usual summer, never got the cue from mother nature to migrate.
Now the temperatures had dipped too low and too fast.
“They have pneumonia, they have shell damage. Some of them have heartbeats of one beat per minute,” said Maxine Montello, the executive director of the NY Marine Rescue Center.
“So we’ll touch the corner of their eye, which I’m not seeing a response, But if I touch his flipper he does have a small response there,” Pryor said.
What followed at the rescue Center was a sort of five-day triage where the turtles, oftentimes on medication, needed to slowly have their temperatures brought back to normal.
