Flying turtles: from tank to tarmac
By Vicki Croke and Christen Goguen
The airlift of three rescued loggerhead turtles has been something of a nail biter.
And the looming ice storm barreling up the East Coast, threatening to derail today’s departure, is just the latest peril for Biscuits, the oldest and largest of the evacuees.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHtd1E8iPoc]
Listen to the Here & Now broadcast from 3/31/14:
From the start, back in November, when Biscuits arrived at the New England Aquarium’s Marine Animal Rescue and Rehab Center, in Quincy, Massachusetts, the odds were stacked against her.
“When she came in she was covered in mud, sand, algae and huge barnacles,” the center’s director, Connie Merigo told us.
Back then Biscuits was known as Number 48. That’s out of 88 sea turtles rescued from beaches on Cape Cod this season by staff and volunteers with the Mass Audubon Society.
All of the animals required critical care for problems that develop when sea turtles are caught in cold water. Their issues ranged from pneumonia to shock.
Biscuits in her tank at the New England Aquarium Marine Animal Rescue & Rehab Center. Photo: Christen Goguen
Every fall, the Aquarium prepares for a deluge of sick sea turtles.
“This is what we sort of call a mass casualty unit,” Merigo said. “If you look at a map of the Cape, there’s that long arm that sticks out that goes all the way to the tip of P-Town. It might just be counter-intuitive to their built-in navigation system to go that far north. They’re trying to go south.”
The result is that the New England Aquarium by far gets the majority of cases of cold-stunned turtles for the entire country.
An X-ray of one of the sea turtles at the rehab center. Photo: Christen Goguen
Most of the sea turtles trapped are young and fairly small. That’s obviously not the case with Biscuits.
“Biscuits is probably the most important turtle,” Merigo says. “They’re all endangered, they’re all important, but only one in one thousand turtles makes it from the egg stage to the size turtle that Biscuits is now.”
At nearly 200 pounds, Biscuits is the largest loggerhead rescued here in 15 years. She’s likely between 15 and 25 years old.
As videographer Christen Goguen and I watched her gliding around her tank, we were struck by a certain soulfulness in her expression. Is that ascribing a human attribute to a turtle? Well, if you have a look at her photo, you can decide for yourself.
A lot has happened to Biscuits that we’ll never know, but she was fortunate to have ended up in this turtle hospital.
Two loggerhead sea turtles awaiting transport. Photo: Christen Goguen.
“Any of these turtles would have died if they didn’t get out of the cold and come here for treatment,” Merigo explained. “Once a week they get removed from the tanks and we re-weigh them [and] make sure that they’re going up. And we check any previously known injuries and we look for anything that might be developing.”
Some of the turtles even received laser treatments, which might just help with pain management.
During one of these sessions, this time with a Kemp’s ridley turtle, we saw how exquisitely tuned into turtles volunteers and members of the staff are. When one little turtle waved his flippers his caretaker employed a clever turtle trick: she gently pushed up on his chin to calm him. And it worked immediately. He stopped struggling.
A Kemp’s ridley turtle receives laser treatment. Photo: Christen Goguen.
All of this work was in preparation for the longer-range plan of getting them down to warm waters around Georgia. Generally, they are driven in cars and vans. But a long drive would be tough on a mature turtle like Biscuits. The turtles of her age, unlike the younger ones, tend to get more stressed in situations like this.
“I was really nervous about putting that large turtle through a very lengthy ground transport,” Merigo said.
As it turned out, the Aquarium called on a guardian angel. One who could fly, and Biscuits’ travel was booked.
The morning of her flight, which begins before dawn, is run with military precision.
Two smaller turtles, numbers 84 and 87, who are traveling with Biscuits, are loaded into crates. And then it’s time for the big girl…
It takes six people to haul her out of her tank and place her safely in a crate.
Time might be short, but turtle comfort is the priority here, and Merigo is intuitive about Biscuit’s state of mind.
So as the team carries the crate toward the van, Merigo stops everything to let the turtle calm down, saying, “I just want to give her a minute…”
Biscuits is measured before being transferred to her crate. Photo: Christen Goguen
When calm enough, Biscuits is loaded into a heated van and driven in a caravan toward a small airport nearby.
On the road, following behind the van, Christen and I hear a status report over our two-way radio: “The big girl is really worked up… She hasn’t stopped flapping around…She seems pretty stressed out.”
Still, all goes well, and at the airport, we meet Tom Haas, aviator and philanthropist.
He’s a board member and volunteer pilot for LightHawk, a non-profit consortium of private pilots who donate their time, planes, and gas to benefit conservation causes in North and Central America.
LightHawk has been around for 35 years, helping with everything from environmental landscape surveys to transporting troubled species including condors, wolves, and cougars.
Today’s transport requires a big plane, and Haas’s Pilatus PC-12 fits the bill.
On a freezing cold morning, members of the New England Aquarium Rescue and Rehab team lift Biscuits onto Haas’s plane. Photo: Christen Goguen
The plan for today is to get Biscuits into the hands of sea turtle experts in Georgia, who will release her as soon as the water down south is warm enough.
Onboard, we are excited to be helping Biscuits on her way.
As we taxi down the runway, we look out the window. The team that has doctored Biscuits is huddled together, waving goodbye. In minutes, we are in the air, and soon Boston is in the distance.
Check out more photos from Biscuit’s journey:
During our flight, Haas leaves the controls to Nathan Brown for a few minutes. He comes back to talk about his passion for conservation.
“I’ve always been an environmentalist all my life,” Haas says.
Having flown many missions for LightHawk, Haas pulls out his phone to share photos of a previous mission: some beautiful wolves he’s had onboard.
Tom Haas shows us photos of wolves he has helped transport. Photo: Christen Goguen
A few hours later, we start making our approach. When we are finally below the clouds, we see the shoreline of St. Simons island.
Biscuits seems to detect something too—biologists know that turtles are deep divers and that they’re sensitive to magnetic fields, so it’s possible she’s being affected by the descent.
A team from the Georgia Sea Turtle Center is waiting on the tarmac. It’s unusually cold and windy here today and the transfer has to be quick.But it isn’t without emotion.
As we stand shivering on the tarmac, we hear the rescuers exclaiming over the turtles as they look into the crates. “Awwwww! They’re so cute! Awww!”
The crates are loaded, and when the van doors shut, we say farewell to our big turtle…“Bye Biscuits!”
We head back to Boston feeling good. Tom Haas is philosophical:
“Tonight when I go home, I’ll think about these turtles and that I’ve really done something nice for them. And let them continue on their adventure in life.”
Biscuits is back where she belongs. Photo courtesy of the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.
Though we couldn’t be with her when she was released weeks later, Christen and I cried when we saw the video sent to us by our friends at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.
We see Biscuits under blue skies, on a warm beach, bulldozing her way to the ocean.
The best part is that she doesn’t look back.
3 Responses to “Flying turtles: from tank to tarmac”
An absolutely stunning presentation, with such captivating narrative and visual content. And what a profound punchline! Were we humans only as able to be as unfettered by the baggage of the past and undaunted by what lies ahead… simply one of the major life lessons we hope to learn from nonhuman beings. Thank you Vicki and Christen.
Go, Biscuits! What a wonderful story – what wonderful work these people are doing (and yay, NEA!)
This is a stunning example of the power of great storytelling. I fell in love with Biscuit. We are in Vicki and Christen’s debt for the time and effort that went into this beautifully told story of human love of an exquisite creature. So many lessons in this tale. Yeah to you two!!!
Comments are closed.