THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 10, 1996 TAG: 9605100543
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROANOKE ISLAND LENGTH: Long : 111 lines
The bodies of at least 20 endangered sea turtles have washed up on Outer Banks beaches since late Tuesday night.
At least two of the reptiles' heads had been crushed - apparently with a hammer. Two other turtles had deep cuts on their rear flippers.
The other animals did not appear to have any unusual injuries or signs of distress, Sheryan Epperly, National Marine Fisheries Service biologist, said Thursday.
``We're performing necropsies on as many of them as we can,'' Epperly said from behind the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, where she was extracting kidneys, ovaries and other organs from a juvenile loggerhead turtle. ``We'll send the tissues to a lab and hope to get some help figuring out what happened.''
Normally, about four turtle carcasses a month show up on the sandy barrier islands, aquarium spokeswoman Liz Pymell said. Between late Tuesday and early Thursday, volunteers brought a dozen dead turtles to the aquarium and people called in reports that at least eight other carcasses had been seen.
All of the animals were dead when they washed ashore. All those brought in were loggerheads, although there was at least one report of an even rarer Kemps-Ridley sea turtle that had already been buried on the beach at Avon. Carcasses were found from Buxton through Kitty Hawk.
Most of the turtles were between 2 1/2and 3 1/2 feet long and weighed 30 to 50 pounds. Some were juveniles. Others were more than 12 years old.
``This is certainly an anomaly in terms of the numbers and concentration of turtles we're seeing here,'' said Ruth Boettcher, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission who was helping Epperly cut open the turtles. ``As far as we know, it's just happening on the Outer Banks right now. We've not had reports of any in Maryland or Virginia so far.''
Biologists are baffled as to what is causing the unusually high number of deaths - the largest for this area in about a year. Between May 21 and June 30, 1995, at least 243 endangered sea turtles washed ashore between northern Maryland and Cape Lookout, N.C., Epperly said. Since most of those turtles were severely decomposed by the time scientists got to study them, the causes of their deaths were not determined.
From December through January, 10 turtles washed up dead or dying on Outer Banks beaches, victims of cold currents. With water temperatures now in the 60s, Pymell said, the recent loggerhead deaths could not have been caused by cold currents.
``Most of these animals have nothing on them. There's no reason for them to be dead, on the outside, at least,'' Pymell said.
Stacked on piles of ice atop blue and brown plastic tarps, covered with plywood sheets to keep the sun off their shells, eight turtle carcasses lay behind the Roanoke Island aquarium Thursday afternoon waiting to be dissected. Biologists already had performed necropsies - animal autopsies - on three loggerheads, taking their bladders, hearts, fat, muscles and other body parts out for examination. Lab results probably won't be ready for at least two weeks.
``We'll look at the organs for signs of contaminants - toxins and pollutants in the water,'' Boettcher said. ``We'll also study the health of the tissue. These animals haven't been floating in the water for a real long time.
``We don't know how many die at sea that wash ashore normally,'' she said. ``But this is a much greater number than you'd usually see. These turtles tend to stick pretty far off shore, in the Gulf Stream area.''
The biologists declined to speculate on what might have killed the turtles. Wounds on the flippers could have been inflicted by natural predators, such as sharks. Or they could have been caused by knives if someone tried to cut them out of a net, said Boettcher.
A turtle that was examined Tuesday night had inflated lungs - which is an indication of drowning, Epperly explained. ``Drowning can be caused by forced submergence in a net. There were no net marks on that animal. But, nets wouldn't necessarily leave marks,'' she said.
``This one's lungs are deflated,'' said Epperly, lifting organs from beneath the female juvenile's tan shell. ``Turtles can die by wet or dry drowning. They can swallow too much water - or close off the entrance to their tracheas to try to keep water out and suffocate themselves. So we haven't ruled out drowning as a cause of death for this one yet.''
``Turtles can live in a net for minutes up to an hour,'' she said. ``It could be a gill net, trawl, or other reason. This turtle had food in its stomach. So it probably was feeding recently. That means it was healthy. Unhealthy turtles wouldn't be eating.''
``Whatever it was that killed these turtles,'' said Epperly. ``I'm sure it wasn't malicious - with the exception of the two with blows to their heads.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Bad week for sea turtles
DREW C. WILSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Glenn Montgomery, of the National Marine Fisheries Service, and Liz
Pymell, of the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, stand near
four of this week's 20 dead turtles at the aquarium.
INFORMATION ON TURTLES
People who find stranded or dead sea turtles should not attempt to
move them. Because they are federally protected animals, it's
against the law to touch one without a permit. Trained volunteers
and aquarium employees will pick up and transport turtles if callers
notify them about the animals' exact whereabouts. Try to give a
cross-street location, name of a nearby hotel or shop, or milepost
number near the beach area where the turtle is. Report turtle
carcass locations as soon as possible so the animals can be studied
before they begin to decompose.
If you find a sea turtle on the Outer Banks, call the North Carolina
Aquarium at (919) 473-3494 or Millie Overman, who heads the
nonprofit volunteer group Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, at
(919) 255-0434.
If you find one in Virginia, call the Virginia Marine Science Museum
at (804) 425-3474.
by CNB