Archive for the ‘Marine Mammals’ Category

Life on the Edge: Adventure of a Lifetime

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

Rescue Endangered Sea Turtles,

               Recover Marine Megafauna

                              from Storm Battered Beaches

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Tiny Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle Rescued from Brewster Beach 

A perfect summer ends and fall brings dramatic change to Cape Cod.  Not just foliage, but the whole fabric of coastal life transforms from easy summer to harsh winter.  Summer’s gentle breezes, cerulean skies and toasty beaches are blown away by autumn storms that howl across the bay.  Summer ripples grow into towering breakers that reshape beaches and deposit oceans of treasure on the shoreline.  Buried among seaweed, flotsam and jetsam lie adventure and discovery in the form of marine creatures that are tossed ashore to helplessly succumb to the elements.  Yet, thanks to beach patrols launched by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, more than a thousand of the most endangered sea turtles in the world have been rescued from these impossible circumstances and restored back to the wild.  Countless marine mammals, giant ocean fish and amazing denizens of the sea have been recovered, yielding breakthrough discoveries chronicled in nature magazines and scientific journals.  And now you’re invited to experience this adventure first hand in Mass Audubon’s Marine Animal Stranding Weekend.

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Sue Wieber Nourse Examines 11-Foot Blue Shark 

On the weekend of November 5th to 7th, Mass Audubon invites a few adventurous souls to join its crack team of coastal rescuers.  From Friday to Sunday, teams will scour beaches, day and night, from Provincetown to Sagamore in search of distressed animals.  In between high tide patrols, participants will take a bayside cruise to Billingsgate Shoal to gain a sea critter’s eye-view of the coastline, to search for pods of pre-stranding animals, and to investigate harbor and grey seal colonies, as well as overwintering seabirds and sea ducks.  Experts will reveal secrets of marine biology and coastal ecology in seminar settings and one-on-one lab work, and still have time to join participants for quiet dinner conversation about the future of the world’s oceans and their most precious species.


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Sea Turtle Patrol Discovers Storm Tossed Seal

Still, the most extraordinary adventures come with midnight high tides.  In crisp November skies, stars hang like Christmas tree ornaments suspended in a shimmering Milky Way garland stretching from Sagittarius in the south to Cassiopeia’s “Big W” in the north.  Footsteps fall silently in the soft, moist sand.  The only sound comes from pounding surf that explodes in your path as a 12-foot flood tide recedes to reveal secrets left behind in the seaweed strewn wrack line.  The beam of your flashlight arcs from dune to sea and back again, searching for mysterious shapes hunkering in the dark shadows. 

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Upside Down Kemp’s Ridley Rescued from Cape Cod Beach

You never know what the night may reveal.  Perhaps a cold-stunned Kemp’s ridley sea turtle tossed upside down on the beach by a northwesterly gale.  Recovering this semi-tropical animal from the cold darkness before hypothermia sets in will make the difference between life and death for this turtle and may make the difference between survival and extinction for this critically endangered species. 

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Seven Foot Ocean Sunfish

Around another bend might lurk a giant ocean sunfish trapped on the flats by a receding tide.  This bizarre looking creature represents the largest bony fish in the ocean and can be found on Cape Cod beaches each fall. 

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Electric Torpedo Ray Found by Sea Turtle Patrol

For an electrifying experience, don’t discount a large torpedo ray that stuns its prey with 220 volt charge.  Ouch!  Last year brought nearly a dozen torpedo rays onto bayside beaches from Truro to Sandwich. 

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Moving Quarter Ton Ocean Sunfish — Click on Picture for Video

Nature, especially on the Outer Cape, offers no guarantee of weather or animals.  Stranding events are driven by prolonged wind conditions, dropping water temperatures and tidal flows.  Yet, early November marks the beginning of the historical stranding period.  And, no matter what has been found in the past, what is absolutely guaranteed to greet you around the next bend in the shoreline is the challenge of the unknown and the adventure of a lifetime.

Mass Audubon’s Marine Animal Stranding Weekend offers a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the adventurer deep inside you; the one who remembers so fondly those great moments of summers past and who finds the walls of boardroom, classroom, operating room, living room, corner office or office cubicle a bit too claustrophobic to endure the whole, long winter without a refreshing breath of cutting edge discovery.  Welcome to a weekend unlike anything you have ever experienced.  Welcome to the Marine Animal Stranding Weekend at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

For more information about this unique opportunity, contact Melissa Lowe at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary at mlowe@massaudubon.org  or 508-349-2615.  For a virtual preview of the experiences that may greet you, click on Turtle Journal at http://www.turtlejournal.com/?p=3515 for photographs and video clips from last year’s stranding weekend.

Battered by Storms and Waves, Outer Cape Suffers Significant Erosion

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Waves Rumble Ashore at Wellfleet’s Newcomb Hollow Ocean Beach

Late February and early March storms battered Outer Cape Cod causing substantial waterfront erosion on both ocean and bay sides.  Under bright sunshine on Saturday, the remnants of these storms still endured with breakers crashing along the nearly 30 mile Great Back Beach.  Enormous gouges have been ripped out of the towering Atlantic coastal sand banks.

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Scalloped Erosion at South Terminus of Indian Neck Sea Wall

On the bayside, erosion has been equally destructive.  At the south edge of the Indian Neck sea wall, “scalloping” has cut deeply into the bank and now threatens the wooden stairway.  Despite supposedly protective tidal fencing, trees have been ripped from the bank by the erosive force of winter storms and flood tides. 

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Continuous Winter Overwash Transforms Indian Neck Salt Marsh

Nearby, this winter’s continuous overwash of the foredune along Indian Neck’s Blackfish Creek shore has transformed the salt marsh habitat previously protected behind it.

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Winter Tides Threaten Terrapin Nesting Sites on Lieutenant Island’s Marsh Road 

Repeated storms and flood tides soften and threaten the extremely productive terrapin nesting sites along Marsh Road on Lieutenant Island’s south shore.  Tidal wrack has been strewn along the roadway and into abutting yards.  Turtle Journal has not previously seen such erosion in the last dozen years.

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Erosion of Lieutenant Island’s Meadow Avenue West

Tides similarly assaulted the roadway connecting the first (east) and second (west) islands with significant erosion and softening.

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Four Additional Pilot Whale Skeletons Exposed by Tidal Erosion

On the west shore of Lieutenant Island, four more pilot whale skeletons have extruded from the sand with winter battering.  See the earlier Turtle Journal posting, Whale Bones Rise from Sands of History, from late January 2010.

Nobody Knows the Troubles — Bad Day on Outer Cape

Friday, March 5th, 2010

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Pickup Truck Stranded on Lieutenant Island Bridge

Outer Cape weather has been rugged this whole week. Wind-driven, non-stop snow/sleet/drizzle mix  pelted the Cape with little accumulation as temperatures hovered around freezing, day and night.  Massive wind-assisted tides tossed wrack high into the dunes and flooded bayside roads.  This workman tried to escape Lieutenant Island late Thursday afternoon, but got trapped between the causeway (right) and mainland road (left) as high tide violently gushed into the South Wellfleet marsh.

Flooded Lieutenant Island Bridge 

Unwilling to wait the two hours it would take for the tide to recede, the workman decided to brave the flooded roadway and drive his pickup through the high salt water.

 Autocide!

The scene reminded me of the favorite summer past time of the South Wellfleet “tidefolk.”  As the tide rises, they go down to the Lieutenant Island Bridge and cheer the tourists as they commit autocide.  Nothing compares with watching a Mercedes SUV in a natural salt water car wash.

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Small 4-Foot Dolphin Carcass on Indian Neck

Continuing the bad day spell on Thursday, Turtle Journal discovered the carcass of a small, four-foot dolphin on Indian Neck.  This specimen had been thrust high into the marsh by storm-driven high tides.  We quickly alerted the Cape Cod Mammal Stranding Network at IFAW (hotline # 508-743-9548), and we sent them digital images via cell phone.

Scavenged Dolphin Carcass off Blackfish Creek

The dolphin washed ashore at the mouth of Blackfish Creek at the southern edge of the Indian Neck sea wall.  Predators had scavenged the carcass while it lay on the beach.

Whale Bones Rise from Sands of History

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

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Don Lewis Reconstructs Pilot Whale Stranding

Six pilot whales rise from the sands of history, uncovered by scouring storms that battered Outer Cape Cod in December and January.   In a rare moment in time revealed by the natural forces that continue to shape our world today, we capture an epic scene from long ago, frozen in the very sands that are Cape Cod.

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Long-Finned Pilot Whale Skeleton Emerges

As we patroled the west beach of Lieutenant Island in Wellfleet, Turtle Journal came across still articulated skeletons of long-finned pilot whales rising from the sands of what had formerly been an ancient salt marsh, now succumbed to the forces of nature and transformed to a barrier beach. 

Pilot Whales Rise from Sands of History

Imagine … as one hundred, or perhaps two hundred or more years ago, a pod of pilot whales chased bait fish into a flooded salt marsh on the western edge of Horse Island, now Lieutenant Island, in Wellfleet Bay.  Maybe on a day like Monday with gale winds howling from the southwest pushing flood water into the bay, the whales swam high into the marsh where they became unexpectedly trapped and stranded when the ebb tide dropped suddenly beneath them, leaving the animals stuck in the ooze marshlands.

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1893 Map of Wellfleet Bay

In those historic days, stranded pilot whales offered survival and a little prosperty to Outer Cape residents scratching a hard living in a harsh and unforgiving environment.  The nearby estuary is named Blackfish Creek in honor of pilot whales, also known as blackfish, that stranded in the hundreds and sustained Cape Codders during the toughest of times.  For more information on pilot whale strandings, see Discovery of Historic Pilot Whale Bones Hints at Cape Cod’s Past.

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Four Articulated Pilot Whale Skeletons “in Formation”

The exposed bones on Lieutenant Island revealed four still largely articulated pilot whales lying two by two at the northern edge of the beach.

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Two More Pilot Whale Skeletons Begin to Emerge

About 100 feet behind this formation of four, two more pilot whales were just beginning to emerge from the moist sands.

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DO NOT DISTURB!

Alive, dead or skeletons, pilot whales are as precious to us today as they were to our Cape ancestors, albeit for different reasons.  Marine mammals are protected under federal law and regulations.  They may be observed and enjoyed without disturbance.

HOT OFF THE PRESSES

CapeCast January 26 2010

CapeCast, the on-line broadcast of the Cape Cod Times, reports on this discovery today, January 26th, 2010.

CapeCast: Bones on the beach!

On today’s CapeCast: Intrepid naturalist Don Lewis takes us out to Lieutenant Island in Wellfleet on a crazy stormy day to see old whale bones!

Stranding Weekend in Teeth of Nor’easter

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

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Quarter Ton Ocean Sunfish Moved to Sanctuary

The Stranding Weekend field adventure offered by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary in mid November is clearly a hands-on, participatory event.  As a gentle fall lingered into the Ides of November, there were concerns that the pre-planned Stranding Weekend would prove nothing more than “a walk on the beach.”

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Breakers Roll into Scusset Beach in Bourne

Thanks to Mother Nature, Hurricane Ida, then tropical storm and finally powerful nor’easter pounded Cape Cod with driving rain and gale force winds blowing directly from the North Atlantic.  While water and air temperatures remained a tad too high to induce cold-stunned sea turtle strandings, the Cape presented a variety of marine species to observe, especially during and immediately after a nor’easter.

 

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Night Sea Turtle Patrol in Teeth of Nor’easter

After a wonderful candlelight dinner in the Wellfleet Bay Nature Center Friday evening, participants endured a brief stranding introduction by weekend leaders, Bob Prescott (sanctuary director), Dennis Murley (senior naturalist), Sue Wieber Nourse (marine scientist and master educator) and Don Lewis (Turtle Guy).  Everyone bundled into layers upon layers of hopefully waterproof clothing, adjusted headlamps and flashlights, loaded into the Mass Audubon van and the Turtle Journal Element and headed to Chapin Beach in Dennis in search for stranded creatures at the nighttime high tide.

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Sandy Neck Teams

Led by Dennis Murley (center) & Sue Wieber Nourse (right)

Bright and early Saturday morning, participants geared up again.  Two teams led by Dennis Murley and Sue Wieber Nourse climbed in the van to head to the Sandy Neck barrier beach in West Barnstable.  With winds blowing from the east northeast, stranded animals were more likely to be found on beaches at the west end of Cape Cod.

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Chipman’s Cove Team Discovers Quarter Ton Ocean Sunfish

Another team under Don Lewis patrolled Scusset Beach on the other side of Cape Cod Canal in Bourne, then hit Campground Beach in Eastham to confirm the stranding of a juvenile torpedo ray and finally visited Chipman’s Cove in Wellfleet to document a freshly stranded male ocean sunfish.

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Examination of Male Ocean Sunfish at Chipman’s Cove

After teams reassembled at the Sanctuary for a great lunch, it was time to saddle up and put our backs into the enormous channel of moving the quarter ton, male ocean sunfish from the beach at Chipman’s Cove to the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary for a scientific necropsy.  You may recall that the scientific name for ocean sunfish (Mola mola) is derived from the Latin word for millstone.  Perhaps that gives you some idea of the challenge ahead.

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Moving Quarter Ton Ocean Sunfish to Necropsy

Nothing creates comraderie more solidly than a backbreaking team build … and moving a quarter ton deadweight more than qualifies as a backbreaking exercise.  You sign up for hands-on experience; you get hands-on experience! 

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Measuring Length of Male Ocean Sunfish

Back at the sanctuary with the Mola mola intact, participants began the process of taking detailed measurements.  Krill Carson of NEBShark joined the leadership team on Saturday for a scientific necropsy of the ocean sunfish.

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Measuring Dorsal Fin of Male Ocean Sunfish

Once external measurements were completed, a detailed necropsy commenced to scientifically document the anatomy of the Mola mola species and to collect certain tissue samples for further analysis.  During the autopsy, we determined that this animal was a male.

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Juvenile Female Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle

The next morning began with a necropsy of a juvenile Kemp’s ridley sea turtle that had stranded on Sandy Neck beach the previous weekend. 

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Bob Prescott Prepares Necropsy of Female Kemp’s Ridley 

Despite a large, well-healed probable shark bite in its lower right quadrant, this specimen was assessed to have been in rather healthy condition prior to getting trapped and cold-stunned in Cape Cod Bay.  Based on the autopsy, the gender of this animal was determined to have been female.

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Fog Enshrouded Cruise of Wellfleet Bay

Necropsy completed, participants headed to the Town Pier to board the Naviator for a two hour cruise of Wellfleet Bay.  The destination would be Jeremy Point and Billingsgate Shoals at the southern end of the Great Island peninsula.  The calm after the storm (Hurrican Ida) brought a thick fog that lay like a comforting blanket over the seascape.  Shorebirds, driven by gale winds to seek shelter in Wellfleet Bay, filled the harbor.  About a half mile west of Indian Neck, we encountered a bull pilot whale … a rare sighting from the Naviator.  Mass pilot whale stranding have occurred with such frequency in Wellfleet that one of its principal estuaries is named Blackfish Creek after the species.

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Curious Gray and Harbor Seals Lounge on Sandbar

On a sandbar off Jeremy Point, we ran into a large gathering of gray and harbor seals, many of whom were as curious about us as we were about them.

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Dennis Murley Looks Forward

To Next Year’s Stranding Weekend