Cold-stunned sea turtles are increasingly being rescued, rehabilitated on Long Island

Scurrying across the sand in front of a crowd of spectators, Arugula the green sea turtle returned to her ocean home.

It was her second homecoming to the waters off Hampton Bays at Tiana Beach.

On Wednesday evening, the New York Marine Rescue Center released five sea turtles back to the Atlantic Ocean after they were rescued and rehabilitated. Among  Emerald , Amethyst, Citrine and Sandstone, Arugula stood out. It wasn't her first rodeo on that beach.

Her first rescue was in December 2024, at Navy Beach in Montauk. Arugula was rehabilitated and released with a satellite transmitter attached to her shell.

Arugula spent the following summer and fall in southern Connecticut, where she made a temporary home, the transmitter showed. But the temperature dropped swiftly as fall turned to winter. Stuck in frigid waters, the sea turtle was unable to make it south in time, said Maxine Montello, executive director of the Riverhead-based center. 

Arugula, like the other turtles, was cold-stunned. The sea turtles' body temperatures drop, causing them to stop feeding, lose the ability to swim and typically wash ashore. 

Nearly a year after Arugula's first rescue, also caused by cold-stunning, the center tracked her location to Port Jefferson Harbor where patrollers set out looking for her.

Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Ferry's dock supervisor Walter Rossler, who was alerted about the turtle, spotted her transmitter’s antenna poking out of the water. After failing to reach it with a boat hook, Rossler said he radioed in a captain for help. His vessel approached slowly to create a small wave to push the frozen turtle closer to the dock. Using a milk crate and rope, he and another person lifted Arugula, who had pneumonia.

"I've never been up close to a sea turtle like that before," Rossler said. "When somebody asked me about it ... I said it was like the size of a turkey platter — a large turkey platter with flippers."

Rossler said he was reunited one last time with Arugula, who now weighs more than 20 pounds, at the release event.

Montello said that while Arugula’s story is unique, the center has seen an uptick in cold-stunned sea turtles.

"I started here in 2017, and we used to get anywhere between 20 and 40 turtles, and now that number is more like 80 to 100," Montello said. "So it's just increasing every year, and our team has just increased our capacity to be able to hold up with these turtles."

Montello said if anyone sees a sea turtle floating, even if it appears deceased, to call the center’s stranding hotline at (631) 369-9829.

Montello said the trend is due to climate change and other factors. Sea turtles, she said, are getting stuck in places like Long Island Sound due to the quick change in temperature. On top of that, the turtles have to make their way around Long Island to get south. That's left marine reptiles like Arugula without enough time to escape to warmer waters.

"The sooner they're found on the beach, that improves their survivorship tremendously," Montello said. "I think a lot of people on Long Island might see a sea turtle on the beach and just assume, 'Oh, it's deceased, there's nothing I can do.' But actually that animal could still have a chance to survive."