More volunteers were required to help find ‘cold-stant’ sea turtles

The beach patrol teams will begin this month in the attempt to find and rescue the endangered maritime turtles in the Atlantic Canada that may be stuck in the fall due to contact with cold water.

The initiative was launched in 2016 after the Canadian-Cing Turtle Network, after small, hard-fasting marine turtles, which usually preferred warm water, washing along the Nova Scotia and New Breanswick along with the coast of Funny Bay.

“We began to understand that this could not only be a sporadic phenomenon, but perhaps an annual event,” Kathleen Martin said, the executive director of the network who is located in Halifax, NS

Due to the tendency to heat sea water, Martin hopes that many turtle species will begin to push forward and north. He said that marine turtles can be found with different shores of Atlantic Canada, which is why they require more volunteers to keep an eye on them.

The body temperature of a turtle is dependent on the water around them, Martin said, and if the water becomes too frightening, they can become a “cold-stand” by hypothermia and muscle rigidity, and lose swim ability. He said that it is important that people who find the turtle washed ash do not put them back in water, because cold water is likely to kill them.

“If we can get them soon, we can rehabilitate them and then put them in warm water,” Martin said.

“If they are not found soon, they will die. And so we want to be able to collect animals and learn from animals we have lost.”

Searching for trapped turtles

Charitable organization says that volunteers are asked to follow the beaches or segments of beaches or beaches at least once a week to search for stranded turtles.

Sydney’s Maria Lisa Poles regularly investigates for turtles while walking with Belfrey Beach in Cape Breton. He said that if they find turtles, volunteers should call the network for advice.

“Originally you walk on the coastline and keep an eye on anything that seems unusual, or even small people can get entangled in some maritime algae until they are washed. So you are looking for almost those things that can look like rocks.”

In search of volunteers

Volunteers are being used to help identify where sea turtles are found and how many of them are landing in Atlantic Canada.

Martin said that the network is searching for volunteers in coastal communities in Atlantic provinces.

“We had turtles in the Magdlane Islands actually. We had a small camp ridelled turtle that was surprisingly washed in the winter last year. We would not have expected to find a hard-shell sea turtle in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.”