Six sea turtles have washed up on Vineyard shores this season as water temperatures around the region begin to drop. 

Half of the turtles that have been found on the Island in the last three weeks have died, including one Kemp’s ridley turtle that washed ashore on Norton Point Beach Wednesday. All were cold stunned, and the three survivors are being rehabbed back to health. 

Edgartown parks commissioner Andrew Kelly came across the Kemp’s ridley turtle with town beach director Anthony Cimeno as they were planting stakes and string in anticipation of the harsher weather ahead. His team then contacted Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

“[Wellfleet] talked to us about our best process of getting the turtle off the beach and the challenge is you can’t warm up the turtle too fast so we have to make sure it’s comfortable,” Mr. Kelly said. “So we gathered the turtle and followed the instructions and brought it back [with us].” 

Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary was then called in and director Suzan Bellincampi arranged transportation for the turtle to Wellfleet, where Mass Audubon staff determined that the turtle wasn’t alive. 

When a turtle is cold stunned, it shuts down due to exhaustion and hypothermia as they’re trying to swim to warmer waters. The Gulf of Maine is a fast-warming body of water, and as turtles try to swim south, the quick-dropping temperatures of the Cape waters cold stun turtles, leaving them stranded in and around the Cape, according to Mass Audubon sea turtle researcher Karen Dourdeville. 

“We’re already up well over 500 cold stuns this year [on the Cape],” she said “Six on Nantucket so far, and six on the Vineyard.” 

The number of cold-stunned turtles in the last decade has generally increased, according to Ms. Dourdeville. The biggest year was in 2014, with more than 1,200 cold-stunned turtles. 

The four species of turtles found in Cape and Islands waters are Kemp’s ridley, loggerhead, green and leatherback. 

“Eight-five to 90 per cent of our cold stuns are juvenile Kemp’s Ridleys, and they’re the most endangered sea turtle in the world,” Ms. Dourdeville said. “So as part of what makes the whole rescue operation so important is just how critically endangered the Kemp’s ridleys are.” 

If a turtle washes up on the Vineyard, Ms. Dourdeville urges the public to not put the turtle back in the water. Instead she asked that people bring it above the high tide line and then call the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay hotline. She said not to warm the turtle either, as warming them up quickly could kill them.  

“The dead turtles are really important for us to collect also,” she said. “So even if the person finding it is absolutely convinced this turtle is dead, we want and need it, because [they’re] really important for science.” 

The Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay hotline is 508-349-2615.