A tale of two turtles

[Flaptail]

This morning, with the wind blowing 25 plus from the northeast, friend LaFleur called and he came and picked me up at 6:30 and off we went to take a drive at low tide along Sandy Neck Beach. We were the first truck out as the sand track was a blank page and we cut the trail out front. Were were about halfway down to Beach Point when we spotted a black fish tote on shore just above the breakers. I jumped out and the tote was in perfect shape, score one for us.

The wind was hauling out of the noth'east hard and Eric says to me, "this is the kind of weather where we are liable to find some marine mammal stranded or dead on the beach. Just after he said that we spotted a sea turtle on it's back just above the high water mark. We stopped and I picked it up and it raised it's head weakly and tried to move it's flippers. It was olive green and about 20 inches long by 16 wide. We put it in the tote and called the Cape Cod Stranding Network, the girl told us they don't do turtles just whales, dolphins and seals and if we ever run across any to leave them and mark the place with a stick ( I said to Eric afterward that yeah sure I will mark a seal with a stick, just look for the stick with red all over it) anyway, she said she would call the Boston Aquarium and get back to us, by now we are back in the Sandy Neck main parking lot, A woman calls us to tell us that we had two options, one drive it halfway to Boaton and they would meet us or drive to Wellfleet to the Audobon Society's place there, which we opted for, and they would transport it and any other turtles found today to Boston Aquarium.

When we got there the gentleman mat us and we brought the turtle in for a quick observation and ID. It was a green sea turtle, rare for these parts and found mostly in warm waters from the Gulf coast to Georgia and probably rode the gulfstream up here and was stunned by the cold. It was labeled ST-29, the 29th one found this year ( Kemp's Ridley endangered, greens rare and leatherbacks which are huge) they had a doa Kemp's Ridley which is smaller than the greens brought in from Eastham this morning. The second turtle of the tale was called in while we were there and it was found at Sandy Neck also, if we had gone down the beach a little more we would have found him too. It was reported to still be alive as was ours. Pretty cool, never saw one up close on the Cape. The woman called from Boston and said ST 29 was on IV and we could come up anytime to see it and the facility they have for rehabilitate them. If all goes well ST-29 will be released next May.