The hatchling release will be held on Tuesday May 29th from 10am-12pm at the DFW’s Burrage Pond Wildlife Management Area, in Hanson, MA. Please  meet at Hawk’s Avenue entrance. We welcome anyone who is interested in this event to join us on this exciting send off. Staff from NMLC will be there with a booth to answer your questions about our facility and the headstart program, and state biologists will be on site to coordinate the release. It is a rare opportunity to see one of our states most endangered turtles.

In addition to the normal release festivities NMLC will stay on site for an private release.  We will be releasing three additional turtles at the same location following the state’s event. Bruce, Pierce & Vesuvius who were also originally part of the Red Bellied Cooter head start program at another facility were turned over to NMLC for rehabilitation and diagnosed with metobolic bone disease last May. They likely did not receive proper care and their dietary needs were not met. Please see our previous posts “New Patients Admitted to the Center – how to care for freshwater turtles” for more about these three turtles. We are happy to say that after spending a year under the care of NMLC staff and volunteers these three turtles are ready to join the other head start turtles. With proper husbandry, calcium treatments, and exposure to necessary UV radiation they have recovered for their ailments.  We are so excited to send these turtles off and would love for you to join us!

For more information on these release events please call the center at 508-743-9888 or email kshaffer@nmlc.org.

Peeking out at her new habitat

One Tuesday the staff and volunteers of the NMLC gathered for a joyous event! The release of Eleanor the Diamondback Terrapin. Eleanor came to the NMLC at the beginning of August after being kept as a pet for about a year. Diamondback Terrapins are a protected species in Massachusetts and cannot be held as pets. Her “owners” found her as a hatchling with a small foot injury and didn’t think she could make it in the wild. Once finding out Diamondback Terrapins are protected they handed the turtle to the NMLC. Luckily they had taken good care of the turtle and she was healthy.

Eleanor has spent the last few month at the NMLC preparing for a life back in the wild. She was weaned off the commercial turtle food she had been consuming and introduced to natural diet items, and slowly acclimated to increased salinity. She was deemed ready for release last week by our veterinarian and on Tuesday she was returned to her original home in Wareham, MA.

Ready for release

An entourage of about 15 people came to send Eleanor off. She was released into an estuarine habitat very close to where she was originally found just over a year ago. Eleanor was anxious to explore her new environment  checking out her surroundings as she quickly left us behind.  Eleanor’s story had a happy ending, but she is a great reminder that wild animals should be left in the wild. If you find an animal you believe to be injured be sure to contact your local wildlife rehabilitation facility where the staff and volunteers are trained to properly care for wild animals. To read more about Eleanor’s stay at the NMLC please read our previous blog posts Introducing Eleanor and Preparing Eleanor for Release, and for additional pictures and video of the release please visit our Facebook page.

Off exploring her new habitat.

Eleanor basking in her habitat at NMLC.

We have enjoyed caring for the Diamondback Terrapin Eleanor these last few months, but it is time for us to say good bye and send her back where she belongs. Eleanor was brought to the National Marine Life Center back at the beginning of August after being held as a pet for approximately one year. NMLC took on the task of converting her to a natural diet and proper salinity and with the approval of our veterinarian and state officials she has been deemed ready for release. This week the staff and volunteers at the NMLC have been busy preparing for her send off.

Inserting Eleanor's Pit Tag

Eleanor received an exam on Tuesday morning including a pre-release blood draw. We received her results on Wednesday and all of her blood parameters were within normal range. The final step in her preparation was the insertion of a pit tag. A pit tag is what a veterinarian would use to “micro chip” your cat or dog. It is a tiny transmitter that is implanted under the skin to uniquely identify an individual animal. Rehabilitation hospitals and scientific researchers use these tags on a variety of species so that they can keep track of the individual animals they are treating or studying. The tag is about the size of a grain of rice and when scanned with a pit tag reader the number that appears can then be linked to that particular animal. If Eleanor ever ends up in another rehabilitation hospital or is scanned by a researcher they will be able to trace her pit tag number back to the NMLC.

Scanning Eleanor's Pit Tag After Implantation

So now that all the preparations have been made it is time for her release. We have scheduled her departure for Tuesday October 4th. Staff and volunteers will be meeting at the NMLC at 10:30 am to travel to the release site. Eleanor will be release in Wareham, Ma very close to where she was reportedly discovered as a hatchling. If you would like to attend her release please email Kate Shaffer at kshaffer@nmlc.org.  For more pictures of Eleanor’s pit tagging procedure please visit our Facebook page.

The past two weeks at the National Marine Life Center have been busy and full of promise. Just as the few days of sun we received were a hint of what the summer has in store, all that has gone on at NMLC recently has shown just how exciting this summer will be as things continue to heat up.

Teanna’s release in Wellfleet last Thursday was very successful. She did not hesitate at all to jump right into a marsh close to where she got herself stuck in a window well last fall, and it was great to see her back where she belongs. Unlike the red-bellied cooters released in May, Teanna was in need of rehabilitation from NMLC when she arrived in January, making this release a bit more special. She would not be swimming around the marshes of Wellfleet today without the help of the staff and volunteers at NMLC. As everything moves forward with the new hospital and we start getting patients in, more successful rehabilitations and releases of turtles, seals, and other marine animals are sure to follow.

The National Marine Life Center has been getting the word out about our goals to families from all across the cape in

The Discovery Center at NMLC

the past two weeks, and it has been great to see how much interest there is in the center. Last weekend we had an informational booth set up at the Sandwich Women’s Club “Touch a Truck” in Sandwich and this weekend we participated in the Cape Cod Maritime Museum’s Maritime Festival in Hyannis. Both events were great opportunities to give people an idea of what kind of work we do at NMLC. Kids and parents alike were fascinated by the preserved turtles and various whale artifacts that we brought along, and the marine animal arts and crafts were a big hit. Before we know it the Discovery Center at NMLC will be filled with families on summer vacation and kids excited to learn about all sorts of marine animals.

Though we may run into a couple more rainy days before it gets here, a bright summer certainly lies ahead at the National Marine Life Center!

Teanna during rounds

It’s actually a really cool program; State officials go to known nesting areas for the RBC’s and collect about 1/2 the eggs in the nest. They distribute the eggs to different organizations and schools to raise the hatchlings from about the size of a quarter to at least the minimum required size by the state.This program gives these endangered turtles a”head-start” allowing them to grow to a size where they will be less effected by predation. Normally these turtles in the wild would burrow into the mud during the cold months and stay almost in a dormant stage until the weather is warm enough for them to survive. But because they are dormant they aren’t able to eat and grow during this period to be large enough defend themselves from predators.

Anyway, back to this week’s events, we got the run down of how to change the water in the different turtle tanks. After we had shadowed the other volunteers, Kate informed all of the interns that a baby bird had fallen out of  its nest which was too high up for it to be placed back in the nest so both Brie and Brian took the bird to the Cape Wildlife facility in Barnstable, MA. When they got back we helped out with the Daisy Girl Scout troops that came to the Discovery Center. Kathy explained all of the exhibits to the children. She talked about the differences between baleen and toothed whales, as well as the differences between seals and sea lions; dolphins, porpoises etc. The girls and their troop leaders then got the grand tour of the facility and the hospital. Then we helped out with some of the educational activities, which consisted of the blubber-glove and the tooth vs. baleen whales.

Tuesday: I came in early to observe the Mass Maritime Cadets doing the water quality. They collected samples from all the different tanks and the pump house. Then we watched rounds that were preformed on the different patients; Catch 22, Teanna, and the Hatchlings. It was cool to watch the different procedures, and Rogers the active veterinarian at the facility was very good at explaining everything that he was doing as well as answering  questions we had about what was going on.

Kate, Andy and Rogers doing rounds, checking to see the Catch 22 is in good health. (Photo Credit: Brie Myre)

Wednesday: We collected different organisms to put in the critter tank in the Discovery Center. I was definitely in my element, this is one of my FAVORITE things to do; just go along the beach picking up shells and difference marine organisms and identifying them. We started off at Onset Beach, we spent a good two or three hours just combing the beach looking at everything. We collected a ton of periwinkles, quahogs, whelks, mussels (blue and ribbed), hermit crabs, Asian Shore Crabs, as well as different types of shrimp that were just swimming in the water. We also collected a lot of shells to put in the beachcombing table in the Discovery Center  like scallop shells, jingle shells, slipper snail shells, pieces of broken whelk shells, etc. We also saw the broken remains of horseshoe crabs which was really cool, but it would have been better if we found live ones. After we felt we had collected a sufficient amount of organisms we headed back to the center but along the  way we stopped near Mass Maritime to check out the differences between the  two beaches. We found a few more interesting species at this beach. In the seaweed I discovered a green crab that was a really good size and decided to add him to our other friends for the critter tank. We also found a live moon snail and a TON of fish. After chasing after the fish for what seemed like forever, we just stood still and they started to ram themselves into our feet. We collected the Fish by the net full but decided to only take three of these mysterious tiny fish back to the tank.

Collecting Shrimp at Onset Beach (Photo Credit: Brie Myre)

Thursday: This was a sad and exciting day. We had to turn in the eight Red-Bellied Cooters back to the state. There was a meeting to discuss how the process was working, the different approaches that worked and didn’t to help with the program for next year. It was very educational and a good learning experience, a lot of these different organizations and schools had different ways of taking care of their Cooters, but at the same time there were similarities. It was really interesting to see how the turtle hatchlings were “cataloged” is the best way to describe the process. It was an assembly line, naming off the facility where the turtle was raised, each turtle was assigned a number which was filed into their scutes (the scales on the turtle’s shell are called scutes). There is a specific numbering system, the shell is split up into four different quadrants (1000′s, 100′s, 10′s and 1′s) and each scute represents a certain number.

The turtle marking process, putting notches in certain scutes so the Cooters will be identifiable in the wild

For example, if a turtle was assigned the number 1395, then the top right quadrant was the thousand’s place so you mark the first scute, then in the top left quadrant the third scute (moving in a counter-clockwise direction) is marked. The next number is a little trickier because in each section there are only about five scutes so 9 would be represented by marking the 4th and 5th scute, and finally the 5th scute is marked in the bottom right quadrant. Then the turtle is passed down the line to get its measurements taken, the length of both the plastron ( the underside of the turtle shell) and the carapace (the top side of the shell) was taken from notch to notch. The weight was then recorded and then they were placed in the appropriate box to be released. This process was carried out for all of the turtles that were dropped off that day and the data would be saved and recorded to be given back to the state to place in their records. Unfortunately when we turned in our turtles we received three deformed turtles. Their shells were majorly deformed into almost mountainous shapes in a pattern called pyramiding. As we later found when Rogers was doing the patient rounds, the turtles suffer from metabolic bone disease which is most likely caused by malnutrition and just abnormal diet, not receiving the nutrients and calcium levels that are needed for proper growth and bone formation. The poor little guys could barely move and swim, and their back legs seem like there weren’t even any bones formed, just Jello. But after we cleaned out the tank from the previous hatchlings, we set up the tank for out three new patients. Then later that night we had our annual meeting  for the National Marine Life Center. We got to see the behind the scenes people that keep this place up and running in addition to Kathy, Kate and Adele.

Friday: The Big Day! We drove up to see the release of the Cooters. There were so many people there who had either helped raise these turtles or just wanted to participate in the release. It was very exciting to see so many people passionate about gaining information about this endangered species as well as seeing them go on their way into the wild to hopefully increase the population and hopefully get this species off the Endangered Species List. I did hear that a possible reason that the hatchlings were released in Hanson instead of Middleboro this year  was because the capacity for the Cooters had been reached for that particular area. Which to me sounds like a very good thing, meaning that there are enough turtles in that area so we can move on to try and boost the population in different areas since the previous one is sustainable. It was cute to see all of the little kids helping with the release, putting the turtles in the water and watching them swim away. Luckily there were enough turtles for my fellow interns and I to release the Cooters as well. In total there were about 120 or so turtles released that day. In addition to watching/helping  with the release, we had also set up a booth to educate the public about our facility and just about marine animals in general. This was our first experience working a festival and interacting with the public. It was fun! When we got back we put together materials for the 5k Race on Sunday. We folded the running shirts and loaded envelopes for the runners with lots of fun goodies. We packed just about 200+ packets for the runners, which is a really good turn out!

Releasing one of the Red-Bellied Cooters (Photo Credit: Kate Shaffer)

Sunday: The day of the “Feet, Fins and Flippers NMLC 5K” run. We arrived to help setting up for the race just before 8am, this consisted of setting up water stations, and arrows along the course. As well as the booth to talk about the center, registration booths and all kinds of fun stuff. We sold raffles tickets and helped the runners set up for the race. The Jazzercise table was also set up behind our booth on the lawn which got everyone pumped up and dancing before the race to get the blood flowing. As soon as the race started we had to quickly run over to the end of the race and set up there. I couldn’t believe how fast the runners were! just only a few minutes after we arrived at the finish line (by car mind you) and set up the first was right there! We did have a good turn out though, we surpassed our goal of at least 100 hundred runners by almost 200 hundred more runners! At the end we handed out prizes for the raffles and also the 1st through 3rd place metals for each age group which was pretty cool.

Brie and I at the Feet Fins and Flippers 5k Race with a couple of the runners (Photo Credit: Brie Myre)

That’s pretty much the whole week in a nutshell, jam-packed with events, crazy and hectic, but fun none-the-less.

In addition to getting to know everyone at NMLC, I have learned a lot about caring for and rehabilitating endangered species of turtles. I came into the week knowing fairly little about what goes into preparing an unhealthy animal to return to the wild, but I am quickly finding out just how extensive of a process this can be. Helping out with water quality testing and admitting
new patients has been interesting and very informative. I never would have imagined how much attention the little turtles require in order to ensure that they are healthy enough to be released
into their natural habitat.

I have also enjoyed helping to educate the public about turtles, marine mammals, and the goals of NMLC. Answering the questions of inquisitive girl scouts as well as their parents on Monday was a lot of fun. The release of the red-bellied cooters on Friday gave me a chance to pass on what I have learned in this week to the enthusiastic families who came to assist and watch. It was also exciting to see the turtles raised by NMLC, along with over one hundred others, released into a pond where they will hopefully thrive and help to increase the population of this beautiful endangered species of turtle.

I am excited for what I will learn over the remainder of the summer about rehabilitating animals and educating people who pay a visit to NMLC.

We welcome anyone who is interested in this event to join us on this exciting day. Staff from NMLC will be there with a booth as part of the Turtle Festival celebrations. You will have an opportunity to meet biologists who have information about how you can help turtles in your neighborhood and how they track turtles using radio telemetry.

This is a great chance to get to see some of our state’s endangered turtles!

It will be held–rain or shine–Friday, May 27th from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. at the DFW’s Burrage Pond Wildlife Management Area, Hanson. Meet at Hawk’s Avenue entrance to the WMA in Hanson.

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing you there!

During rounds on Tuesday Teanna received her exit examination and radiographs and has been deemed fit for release next week. Everyone is welcome to attend this happy occassion, and see Teanna off on her safe return to the Marsh. The release will take place on Thursday June 2nd at 12:00PM in Wellfleet, Ma. Teanna meaning free spirit, a name was selected via a Facebook vote, has proven fit for this turtle. She is very active and ready for her return to the wild. If you would like to attend please contact our Animal Care Coordinator Kate Shaffer for more details at kshaffer@nmlc.org

Today the National Marine Life Center had participated  something outside our normal daily activities of education programs and turtle care. At roughly 3PM , the NMLC crew took a brief moment out of busy schedules to celebrate a quick and joyous moment to release our Black Backed Gull friend.

Our gull friend, formerly known as Winger, was spotted walking along the main street of Buzzards Bay outside the center on June 28th. I had approached him in the middle of the street when I discovered he had a terrible break in his left wing. After some quick thinking, Joanne and I were able to chase the sea gull down the street and wrangle him into a carrier. He was then transported to Cape Wildlife for his medicinal care, since NMLC is not permitted to take care of birds. Nevertheless, Winger spent a little over a month with Cape Wildlife under great care, where we were able to release him back into the wild.

On this very successful event, it was a joyous occasion,  while Winger took his fifteen minutes of fame with us. He make sure to check out his surrounds by walking the park and getting hydrated. Before he was ready to take flight, which he did so nicely! On behalf of NMLC crew: Winger, the best of luck and take great care of that wing!

Occasionally, volunteers swabbed the terrapins' shells gently with a dilute veterinary cleansing solution to remove algal growth.

On June 14th our eight diamond-backed terrapin hatchlings are going home! These small turtles, listed as “threatened” by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, hatched too late in the season last year to survive the cold winter.  They’ve spent the past 7 1/2 months in a nice, warm environment at the National Marine Life Center.  Daily, volunteers fed the animals and cleaned their tanks.  Weekly, volunteers weighed and measured the animals.

Dr. Williams examines each terrapin with a veterinary scope.

With the warming of weather, we’ve been preparing the diamond-backs to return to the wild by introducing clams and quahogs to their diet and increasing the salinity of their habitats to match their natural salt marsh environment.  The last step was an exit exam.  NMLC Veterinarian Dr. Williams examined each animal’s eyes, limbs, and shell, took weights and measurements and a full set of identification photographs, and proclaimed the turtles fit for release!

Thank you to the many volunteers who assisted in caring for these young turtles.  Because of you, the animals have a second chance at survival.

The release is open to the public.

RELEASE DETAILS:
TIME:  Monday, June 14, 3:00 pm
LOCATION:  Meet at Great Island Parking Lot in Wellfleet, MA
DIRECTIONS: From Sagamore Bridge:
~ Cross Sagamore Bridge.  Head south on US-6E for approximately 36.1 miles.
~ At the traffic circle, take the 2nd exit onto US-6E/Mid-Cape Hwy
~ Continue to follow US-6E for 11.7 miles
~ Turn left at School Street and continue onto Mill Hill Road for 0.3 miles
~ Turn left at Ryder Court for 0.2 miles
~ Continue onto Holbrook Avenue, and turn right at Chequessett Neck Road for 0.5 miles
~ Take a slight left to stay on Chequessett Neck Road for 1.9 miles
~ Park in Great Island Parking Lot