In 2002 I joined with Bob Prescott to establish a toll-free hotline on which boaters could report sightings of sea turtles off southern New England. We realized that there was a growing network of volunteers to report and respond to entangled, dead and cold-stunned sea turtles, but there was not an active mechanism to record sightings of live, free-swimming turtles. Fliers advertising the hotline are mailed to yacht clubs, marinas, harbormasters and other community locations, and the Coalition for Buzzards Bay includes a hotline notice in their environmental packet distributed to boaters. In recent years the hotline—1-888-SEA-TURT (1-888-732-8878)—has been advertised in the On the Water magazine.
There are two major goals of the hotline: (1) to document where and when sea turtles occur, and (2) to alert boaters to the presence of sea turtles in the summer and fall so the boaters will avoid hitting them. This year a website has been added, with an online reporting form, maps showing location of reports and information about the four species which occur in our local waters.
Responders are instructed that if the sea turtle is presently entangled or injured, requiring immediate assistance, they should call 1-800-900-3622, the “Disentanglement Hotline” of the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. Otherwise, responders are asked to provide date and time of sighting, location, approximate size of turtle, and any other details noted. If responders leave a phone number or email address the boaters’ hotline will respond promptly to answer questions or discuss the sighting.
The sightings are kept in a database, which is available for other researchers to use. The 2008 season reports alerted us to two “hotspots” of leatherback aggregations in June – one off Sakonnet Point in Rhode Island and the other around Lucas Shoal, in Vineyard Sound. We have received a possible leatherback sighting this year on May 16, off Cotuit in Nantucket Sound, although no other reports have come in yet. Be on the look-out!
Karen Moore Dourdeville
Ed. Note: Karen Moore Dourdeville was a whale biologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is active in various environmental activities on Cape Cod and the Southshore of Massachusetts.
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