“It made a difference to that one.”

From The Parable of the Starfish

Source Unknown

ON THE DAY the Whooping Cranes landed in the wetlands of St. Marks NWR, another drama was unfolding a few miles down the coast. Several weeks of excessive cold in Florida threatened more than the strawberries. Endangered Green Sea Turtles were in distress, cold-stunned, from the Outer Banks to the Gulf Coast of Texas. Without human intervention, these reptiles, unaccustomed to challenging thermal conditions, were facing certain death.

Conditions threatening their survival occur when the water temperature drops below 40 F degrees. At that point, turtles become unable to move their bodies, and internal organs shut down. The threat is essentially hypothermia. Most of the turtles in distress are juvenile Greens. Green Sea Turtles are vegetarian, and swim in the coastal shallows, grazing on lettuce and other leafy underwater salad. Some Loggerhead and Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtles were also affected.

Photo by Christine Barnes, The Northfield News A volunteer carries a stranded Green Sea Turtle to the tank at the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab where it will join others until the weather warms the waters. At the crane flyover, Jack Rudloe, co-owner with his wife, Anne Rudloe, of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in nearby Panacea, alerted the crowd of viewers to the concern. The Marine Lab had already rescued 30 juvenile Greens and had given them temporary room and board in tanks at the lab site. A few of us decided to go visit the turtles after the crane flyover.

At the lab, four children and six adults in our group ogled and exclaimed at the wonderful array of specimens from the deep. We were so enchanted that it took a while to move through the front rooms to the open shelters located outside at the back of the complex. There we saw the tank holding the juvenile Greens – 30 of them, and watched them try to cope with their confusing, hard, round, restricted world, seemingly unaware of their brush with death.

Most were about 15-20 inches from head to tail. Most sported barnacles riding piggy-back – turtle barnacles, we were told, specific to only turtles. This type of barnacle can travel around on surfaces, unlike those on the bottom of a boat or on the local fishing piers, which are affixed to their site.

While at the lab, a small compact car came to the gate. Two volunteers opened the trunk of the car, and unloaded 15 more turtles into an adjacent tank. We learned of other species in distress from the cold. Dozens of endangered Manatees were seen swimming at the warm water discharge outlet from power stations along the coast. Tropical fish died. Iguanas were so immobilized from the cold that they fell out of trees. People picked them up and warmed them. Research facilities, marine labs, animal hospitals, and untold numbers of private homes offered whatever relief they could to the small creatures affected by the cold snap.

Up and down the coast, however, the focus was on the turtles. Volunteers brought an additional 15 stranded turtles to the Marine Lab after we left. Farther south in the Florida Keys, rooms in an old motel became a temporary haven: rescuers placed some of the biggest turtles, 200 pound Loggerheads, in kiddie pools. Space heaters set up around the rooms helped to raise the reptiles’ core temperatures.

No one will ever know how many turtles perished in the cold. To be sure, it was a setback for their fragile numbers. Without people lending a hand, the toll might have been catastrophic. In one day, we shared in the drama of endangered species from both the sky and the sea. Against the backdrop of an earthquake-ravaged Haiti, a few migrating Whooping Cranes and a lot of cold turtles hardly seem important. The perspective is, we all matter to each other - in some way – every living thing – and when we reach out, it does make a difference.