Cold-stunned sea turtles are washing up on NY beaches. What you should do if you find one.

Make sure to store the sea turtle stranding hotline in your cellphone just in case, marine rescuers say, as they are noticing a recent uptick in cold-stunned turtles since the season began last Saturday. 

“We’re swimming in turtles,” said Maxine Montello, rescue program director at Riverhead’s New York Marine Rescue Center, which is already caring for 23 that came ashore in the state — three more than stranded here all last autumn and winter.

When the winds blow from the northwest, cold stunned sea turtles, those caught too far north when the Atlantic cooled, typically wash up on Long Island’s North Shore and sometimes on South Shore beaches that face north, experts said.

And that is the direction the winds will be coming from Friday night to Saturday morning, said Joe Pollina, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

 If you do come across a young sea turtle on the shore and it appears lifeless, don't give up on it: You can call (631) 369-9829.

“Just assume it’s alive until you’ve talked with the biologist” on the hotline, said Rob DiGiovanni, chief scientist with the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society in Hampton Bays.

Even a motionless, plate-sized juvenile may come back from the brink — as did two lucky victims of hypothermia found in New York this week.

The animals were not breathing on their own and had no detectable heartbeat, Montello said. "We were able to get them breathing," she said. “They are doing really well, swimming on their own and slowly warming up.”

New York saw its highest amount of cold-stunned turtles in 2019, when 85 came ashore, since the group started keeping records in 1986. “That’s what I’m feeling we might be seeing this year,” Montello said.

Smaller turtles, including green sea turtles and Kemp’s ridleys, typically strand first. Only weighing around five pounds, these juveniles lose body heat more swiftly than their loggerhead peers, which may weigh as much as 30 pounds, explained Dr. Charles J. Innis, of Boston's New England Aquarium, by email.

So far, almost all New York’s cold-stunned turtles have been greens. They are the sole herbivore sea turtle and the largest of the hard-shell varieties, with a top weight of 350 pounds and a life span of seven decades or longer, NOAA says. 

Only a few Kemp’s ridley sea turtles have come ashore on New York beaches so far, Montello said. They are the world’s smallest sea turtle, with a top weight of around 100 pounds.

Boston's New England Aquarium, which revives hundreds of sea turtles every year, now has approximately 100 since its season started.

That is a “fairly typical” beginning, said Innis, the aquarium’s director of animal health. Last year, it cared for about 500 sea turtles; the peak of 730 was set in 2014. 

The aquarium sends its overflow to East Coast rescuers, including Long Island’s.

“A group is going to Mystic Aquarium today by car,” Innis said. “Flights are being planned to some southern U.S. facilities in the next few days.”

The youngsters often have spent weeks floating helplessly in water far too cold for them to function, suffering not only from hypothermia but also pneumonia, caused by inhaling seawater. 

Blame climate change for the Gulf of Maine's soaring temperatures, which lure the juveniles into staying up north long after they should have migrated south, where waters are in the 70s to 80s instead of the 40s and 50s.

The New England Aquarium, Innis said, only admitted dozens of sea turtles every year in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

In his July 21 Congressional testimony, he said: "Last year we admitted 500 turtles, and models suggest that this number may increase into the thousands by 2030."