With the help of two ferries and some human rescuers, a cold-stunned sea turtle made its way from a Chappaquiddick beach to the New England Aquarium Monday.
During President Obama’s vacation, I was driving down Middle Road in Chilmark because a portion of South Road was closed during his visit. As I was passing by the Keith Farm, the car in front of me suddenly stopped on the right side of the road.
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.
A 17-pound live green sea turtle found on Chappaquiddick more than a
week ago is recovering at the New England Aquarium. The turtle,
nicknamed Quiddick by a Vineyard veterinarian who first treated it, is
the first endangered green turtle recovered live from the Vineyard.
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.
In the past two weeks, I have had three run-ins with an old friend. We seem to meet at the same place at the same time annually. I shouldn’t be surprised.
