(WHDH) — Five rescued sea turtles are heading home Monday morning after spending more than six months at the New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital.
The 30- to 75-pound loggerhead sea turtles were found stranded on the north side of Cape Cod last December suffering from hypothermia, prolonged lack of food, extreme dehydration, pneumonia and vital organ problems, according to aquarium spokesperson Tony LaCasse.
The threatened species were among the illest of the nearly 300 sea turtles that the aquarium’s marine animal rescue team treated.
Biologist equipped the turtles with high-tech satellite trackers, which are crucial when it comes to learning about how these animals live.
“Even though we have hundreds of sea turtles that strand on Cape Cod every autumn, we don’t have a lot of information about how they use the area,” LaCasse said. “Sea turtle presence on Cape Cod has been here since, probably colonial times but nowhere near the numbers we have now. So to be able to collect that information is really helpful.”
The turtles will be released in the sand at 8:30 a.m. about 25 yards from the waters in Cape Cod. They will then slowly crawl down the beach to the surf, where they will swim back into their ocean home.
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