Comatose and Washed Up, 1,000 Endangered Sea Turtles Are Rescued in Florida

Their flippers were paralyzed, they couldn’t come up for air, and their heartbeats were barely perceptible.But most of these 1,200 sea turtles were lucky.

The wind and currents had carried their motionless bodies ashore, where, at least, they could be found.Last week’s extraordinary storm that delivered a blast of winter to the South, including several inches of snow in the Florida Panhandle, turned the waters of St.Joseph Bay frigid and weakened its endangered sea turtles to the point of inactivity.It also prompted a complex rescue effort involving several government agencies that allowed about 1,000 of the sea turtles to be saved — among Florida’s largest cold-water turtle rescues in the last 15 years.Like other Floridians, the sea turtles had been caught off guard by the wintry weather.Many of the turtles make their home in St.

Joseph Bay, near the middle of the Panhandle.The body of water has only a narrow inlet at its northern point into the deeper and warmer Gulf of Mexico.“When it gets really cold, they aren’t able to respond very quickly because in order to exit the bay, they have to travel quite a way,” said Allen Foley, a wildlife biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“They have to travel north to get out, which may be counterintuitive to them, especially if they’re somewhat anxious to get out.”Sea turtles are coldblooded, so they cannot regulate their body temperature.When the water temperature drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, their internal body temperature also falls, causing them to become cold-stunned, according to scientists.

Sea turtles stay submerged for hours at a time while resting or sleeping, but they usually surface several times each hour to breathe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscrib...