Dr. Roger Kligler, a retired internist who lives in Falmouth, takes his golden retriever Bodie everywhere with him. Everywhere except on runs to the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.
A second cold-stunned Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle is on the mend after it was rescued on the Chappaquiddick side of Norton Point Beach during Saturday’s northeaster.
A juvenile, cold-stunned Kemp’s ridley sea turtle is on the road to recovery Friday after washing up on the Chappaquiddick side of Norton Point Beach Thursday morning.
Benton Wesley hesitated, but once Frank Hardy got the feel of sand beneath his flippers, he made a beeline for the surf, soon disappearing under a crashing wave on the Vineyard’s south shore.
About 10 months after the two rare Kemp’s Ridley turtles washed up on a Cape Cod beach in a hypothermic state, they were returned to the waves off Long Point in West Tisbury Wednesday.
Compared with the distance it had already come, the little turtle’s voyage from Martha’s Vineyard to Woods Hole was short. The only unusual thing was, it went by ferry.
Shellbey, the juvenile Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle, was in bad shape, you see. Made lethargic by cold and battered by the weekend’s storm, it was washed up injured on the Island’s north shore.
The long journey of a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle named Shellbey came to a sad end early this month, when the turtle was found dead in an isolation tank at its temporary home at the University of New England’s Marine Animal Rehabilitation Center in Biddeford, Me.
Fortunately the family that found the turtle washed up on the Vineyard’s north shore shortly after Thanksgiving last year got one last chance to see Shellbey, when they visited the rehabilitation center in January.
Cold, stunned and stranded describes more than just the Vineyarders who got stuck on or off-Island in last weekend’s storm. There was another visitor that was also powerless to get to its destination.
Though Sunday brought the sun and an eventual resumption of ferry service, one Island guest needed a little assistance to get on its way.
Weathermen are not the only ones confused by this year’s unseasonably warm winter weather. Off the Cape and Islands, this winter more than 100 sea turtles, tempted to linger in the balmy waters, have met a cold and sandy end.
“This year I’ve seen more turtle strandings than I’ve ever seen in my 12 years here,” Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary director Suzan Bellincampi said on Thursday.
