Hundreds of baby turtles have been rescued from storm drains at the Jersey Shore, but they weren’t mutant ninjas.
Over the past few weeks, volunteers scooped 826 diamondback terrapin hatchlings from storm drains in Margate, Ventnor and Ocean City, where they had been hiding from cold temperatures over the winter while surviving off yolk sacs, Stockton University wrote in a Facebook post.
Two volunteers— Marlene Galdi and Joanne Freas— often help turtles crossing busy roads at the Jersey, but more recently realized the babies are small enough to slip through the cracks of storm drains. The pair spotted the quarter-sized creatures swimming in the drains in Ocean City one day and used a custom scooper from a telescopic aquarium net attached to a bamboo pole to rescue them.
Another volunteer, Evelyn Kidd, has been rescuing baby turtles from storm drains for years and has trained local children in her neighborhood on how to scoop up the terrapins. Recently, she and the kids rescued the reptiles from drains on Absecon Island.
The women enrolled the hundreds of turtles they rescued over the past few weeks in Stockton University’s “Head Start” program, where staff care for and rehabilitate the creatures for about a year before placing them back in the wild.
A terrapin that goes through the program is about two to three times larger than a wild terrapin of the same age, according to Stockton University. There are 1,108 terrapins receiving care under the program, which has reached capacity.
If you find a terrapin hatchling, Stockton recommends putting it in a shallow container of room temperature water filled up to the turtle’s shell and placing a rock or shell inside the container. The container should be out of sight of any hungry gulls or crows flying overhead. Healthy terrapins can be released at dusk into a tidal creek or bay area.
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Avalon Zoppo may be reached at azoppo2@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AvalonZoppo.