Go, little Lavender, go!

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff

She was discovered almost frozen to death, flung up against a Cape Cod beach in a sad annual ritual that paralyzes, then kills, some of the world's most endangered sea turtles in the frigid North Atlantic.

But Lavender and four other Kemp's Ridley turtles were saved from a watery grave by workers and volunteers from Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary and slowly warmed back to life.

Scurrying to the sea (Bill Allan, Mass Audubon)

Last month, Lavender and the other turtles were released on Dowses Beach in Osterville and - thanks to modern technology - we now know she has swum more than 182 miles and stuck close to the Cape. A satellite transmitter on Lavender's back is letting scientists - and the public - know where she is virtually every minute of the day. Check it out at www.seaturtle.org/tracking and scroll down to the National Marine Center release in 2008.

The dramatic rescue of sea turtles takes place between October and January every year after some juvenile turtles, who swam north in the summer to feed on the region's crabs, become trapped in the crook of Cape Cod.
Because they are cold-blooded, the turtles' bodies assume the temperature of the water around them - and the cold slowly robs them of the ability to move away before killing them.

Lavender's busy route

For 30 years, Cape Cod volunteers have combed winter beaches in frigid temperatures to find the turtles before coyotes or other animals do. Hundreds have been saved over the years.

There are only a few thousand breeding pairs of Kemp's Ridley turtles in the world, so every rescue may be helping save the species. The turtles, unlike the enormous leatherbacks that can also get trapped, are among the smallest of sea turtles, with adults weighing up to 100 pounds and reaching about two feet in length.

The release was part of a joint effort of Mass Audubon, the New England Aquarium, the National Marine Life Center, the University of New England Marine Animal Rehabilitation Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Woods Hole Science Aquarium and the Riverhead Foundation.

Freedom! (Mass Audubon)

"This is exactly what I envisioned 30 years when we found our first stranded, cold stunned sea turtle,'' said Bob Prescott, Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary Director. "For more than a decade, these annual releases have successfully returned critically endangered rehabilitated cold stunned sea turtles back into the wild."

Lavender's satellite tag was funded by donors at the National Marine Life Center 2007 Mermaid Ball fundraising gala.