Rare turtle washes up on Cape Cod

Cape Cod had an unusual visitor from the open ocean Wednesday night. A dead leatherback sea turtle weighing several hundred pounds washed ashore at Popponesset Beach in Mashpee, a spokesman for the New England Aquarium said.

Tony LaCasse said leatherbacks are an endangered species. This one was 6 to 7 feet across and had been dead for a long time.

The body was too decomposed for an necropsy to be performed, he said.

A biologist from the University of New Hampshire, which is working with the aquarium and the Massachusetts Audubon Society to research the turtles, took tissue samples and measured the body before it was removed from the beach, LaCasse said.

It is unusual for a leatherback to wash ashore on a Massachusetts beach, because they stay in the open water where they feed on jellyfish, he added.

Some leatherbacks have been found weighing as much as a ton.

Leatherbacks are unusual reptiles, LaCasse said, in that they can shunt blood to their outer extremities. This allows them to travel to colder temperatures than most turtles, as far as the Gulf of Maine and the Canadian sea provinces.

ANNE BAKER