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Over the past few days, about 300 cold-stunned sea turtles have washed ashore on beaches in Massachusetts. The animals are now in critical condition, but they're being nursed back to health in a converted warehouse in the seaside city of Quincy. Eve Zuckoff from member station WCAI brings us inside the facility and the effort to save the turtles.
EVE ZUCKOFF, BYLINE: A black, dinner-plate-sized sea turtle lies motionless on an exam table in the hallway of the New England Aquarium Sea Turtle Hospital. Dozens of staff and volunteers are buzzing around as Adam Kennedy, the director of the hospital, tries to get a readout.
ADAM KENNEDY: This turtle's alive, but we're struggling to get the heart rate on it. So yeah, that's what we're listening for.
ZUCKOFF: Kennedy, who's dressed fully in green surgical scrubs, takes a fetal heart rate monitor and gently pushes one end of it into the fleshy neck of the endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle.
(SOUNDBITE OF HEART RATE MONITOR WHOOSHING)
KENNEDY: You hear that?
ZUCKOFF: The handheld monitor is connected to a speaker that Kennedy holds up to our ears. We hear the subtle whoosh of a heartbeat, and he smiles.
KENNEDY: So six beats per minute. That's good. The zeros are a little bit more - obviously more worrisome.
ZUCKOFF: Since Sunday, groups of volunteers have been combing Cape Cod beaches, packing sea turtles into banana boxes and driving them to the hospital. This is one of dozens of clinics along the Eastern Seaboard, where stranded sea turtles with pneumonia, sepsis and other illnesses and injuries can get much-needed help.
MELISSA JOBLON: It is tiring. It is stressful. It's really fast paced.
ZUCKOFF: Melissa Joblon, director of animal health.
JOBLON: But we all want to be here. And it's a really rewarding thing to be able to see a turtle come in who looks almost dead when they arrive, and then release them several months later.
ZUCKOFF: Since the 1970s, the aquarium's sea turtle hospital has helped rehabilitate more than 5,000 injured sea turtles. Each fall, as water temperatures drop into the North Atlantic, loggerhead, green and Kemp's ridley sea turtles, who've spent their summers in Cape Cod Bay, try to begin a southern migration. But, Kennedy says, the Cape Cod Peninsula, which juts 65 miles into the ocean and curves up like a flexed arm, acts as a trap.
KENNEDY: They just want to head south. But, ultimately, they end up getting so cold they just start floating at the top of the surface. They're very debilitated, and then it's the winds that actually push them in.
ZUCKOFF: In the early 2000s, the hospital was treating about 40 sea turtle patients per year. If the current trends continue, it could reach a thousand admits by the end of 2024. Experts attribute the increase to climate change. Historically, sea turtles haven't really ventured north of Massachusetts because the Gulf of Maine has been too cold. But now it's one of the fastest-warming bodies of water in the world.
KENNEDY: With the warming of the Gulf of Maine, that kind of push north is here longer, so it allows more turtles to funnel into Cape Cod Bay.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONITOR CRACKLING)
ZUCKOFF: Across the hospital, staff are assigned their own roles - starting fluids, administering x-rays or developing treatment plans. Biologist Kat DeStefano works in the clinic, taking blood samples from her hard-shelled patients.
KAT DESTEFANO: Yeah. I often want to tell them that what we're doing to them is going to make them feel better and help them understand. It's hard to see them under stress.
ZUCKOFF: Staffers expect about 80% of the turtles to survive their strandings. And already, some have responded by splashing around in their tanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
ZUCKOFF: But few of them will finish their recovery here at the New England Aquarium's facility. Most will be loaded onto planes and flown to other sea turtle hospitals further south. Just about 70 of the most critically injured will stay in Quincy, getting individualized care - and names. Greek Gods is the theme this year. Staffers plan to release them back onto Cape Cod beaches next summer.
For NPR News, I'm Eve Zuckoff.
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