2024 Marks Fourth Busiest Season on Record for Cape Cod Sea Turtle Strandings

It’s been a long year for Cape Codders who rescue cold-stunned sea turtles from local beaches.

Staff and volunteers with Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary have rescued around 800 stranded sea turtles from Cape Cod beaches this year. That’s about 130 more than last year.

Eamon Caffrey, cold-stunned sea turtle coordinator for the Sanctuary, said the vast majority of have been Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles, but there has been an unusually high number of green sea turtles.

“We might be close to a record year for green sea turtles alone,” Caffrey said. “We’re at 59 currently.”

In fact, it’s been a year full of noteworthy incidents.

“What happened this year was we got the biggest loggerhead sea turtle I had ever seen,” he said. Loggerheads usually are about 20-80 lbs. “We had a 123 lb-about [loggerhead] come in alive.”

The team also experienced the third busiest period in the entire program’s 45-year history. On December 6th, 141 sea turtles were rescued in a single day.

And the season isn’t over; Caffery said he expects it will go through the first week of January, so he wants people to know what to do if they find a stranded sea turtle.

“You drag it above the high tide line so it doesn’t refloat, cover it with dried seaweed … or dune grass, stuff like that to keep it out of the wind, and then give the outline a call and our staff will be dispatched to go and pick it up.”

The number to call is 508-349-2615, Option 2.

This story was originally published by CAI. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.