Their flippers were paralyzed, they couldn’t come up for air, and their heartbeats were barely perceptible. But most of these 1,200 sea turtles were lucky. The wind and currents had carried their motionless bodies ashore, where, at least, they could be found.
Last week’s extraordinary storm that delivered a blast of winter to the South, including several inches of snow in the Florida Panhandle, turned the waters of St. Joseph Bay frigid and weakened its endangered sea turtles to the point of inactivity.
It also prompted a complex rescue effort involving several government agencies that allowed about 1,000 of the sea turtles to be saved — among Florida’s largest cold-water turtle rescues in the last 15 years.
Like other Floridians, the sea turtles had been caught off guard by the wintry weather.
Many of the turtles make their home in St. Joseph Bay, near the middle of the Panhandle. The body of water has only a narrow inlet at its northern point into the deeper and warmer Gulf of Mexico.
“When it gets really cold, they aren’t able to respond very quickly because in order to exit the bay, they have to travel quite a way,” said Allen Foley, a wildlife biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “They have to travel north to get out, which may be counterintuitive to them, especially if they’re somewhat anxious to get out.”
Sea turtles are coldblooded, so they cannot regulate their body temperature. When the water temperature drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, their internal body temperature also falls, causing them to become cold-stunned, according to scientists. Sea turtles stay submerged for hours at a time while resting or sleeping, but they usually surface several times each hour to breathe.
If their temperature remains low or they are not washed ashore and rescued, they may develop health problems or die. If they are not found quickly, many will die, eaten by sea gulls or vultures, Dr. Foley said, or raccoons or coyotes. Or they simply succumb to exposure.
Dr. Foley and more than 40 others, mostly volunteers, combed 13 miles of snowy shoreline along St. Joseph Bay every day from Jan. 21 through Sunday after last week’s storm, searching for comatose turtles.
Most of those rescued were green sea turtles, according to Samantha Snow, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, who helped lead the effort. Federal, state and county agencies came together. Local businesses donated meals and transportation.
“I ran into something that I haven’t had to deal with in the past, which was road closures and freezing bridges,” Ms. Snow said of commuting to the shore. Despite their own weather hardships, the rescuers worked each day until sundown.
“When you’re walking the shore, you could easily count 15, 20 turtles in your vision looking down the shoreline,” she said. They tried hard not to miss any smaller ones.
Each volunteer is certified to handle sea turtles, and most of the reptiles can be picked up by one volunteer and delicately placed in a bin.
But the bigger ones, which weigh more than 100 pounds, needed two to four people. They were placed in plastic kiddie pools. All of the turtles were then trucked to Gulf World Marine Institute in Panama City Beach, also in the Panhandle.
“I think the big takeaway for this is how exhausting this work can be day after day,” Ms. Snow said. “How the community and the volunteers and the organizations come together to handle a mass cold-stun event.”
Rushed to the Gulf World Marine Institute, the turtles were gradually warmed back to a healthy temperature. The institute can accommodate about 1,200 sea turtles in large saltwater tanks.
A half-dozen trained staff members gave medical exams, and many of the turtles needed blood tests to help determine their condition. About 200 of the endangered sea turtles have died since the rescue, officials said on Thursday.
Each turtle is being tagged, measured and photographed, said Secret Holmes-Douglas, the institute’s director, so that they can be better cared for, should they ever return.
Cold-stunning events happen each year, but they typically affect only a few dozen turtles annually in Florida. These events occur in waters as far north as Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts and as far south as Corpus Christi Bay in Texas.
Two other turtle rescues in Florida stand out: In 2010, about 1,800 turtles were saved, biologists said, and more than 1,000 turtles were rescued in 2018.
“In a normal event, the water would be cold, and the sun would come out and some of the turtles warm up,” Ms. Holmes-Douglas said. “You’re dealing with snow banks now that the turtles aren’t used to. They were exposed to more extreme temperatures. So we did expect a little bit more of a mortality rate. But, overall, I’m pleasantly surprised by the success.”
The rescue effort had come full circle late this week. After warmer weather in the Panhandle raised water temperatures, hundreds of medically cleared turtles were trucked back to the shoreline and will be released through the weekend.
The biologists and volunteers carried the turtles, whose flippers were frantically waggling. The land dwellers carefully placed the sea dwellers on the shore.
Then the turtles waddled in the muddy, marshy shoreline for a few seconds before the waves swept them back home.
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