Lowell Lecture
Saving Sea Turtles: Preventing Extinction
Date & Time
Feb. 22, 2017 at 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Location
New England Aquarium
1 Central Wharf Boston, MA 02110
Driving Directions
Speaker(s)
Michele Gomes & Jennifer Ting – Filmmakers; followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Charles Innis, Director of Animal Health, New England Aquarium; Constance Merigo, Marine Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation Manager, New England Aquarium; Bob Prescott, Sanctuary Director, Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary & NOAA’s MA (Quincy south) Sea Turtle Stranding Coordinator and Kate Sampson, Sea Turtle Stranding Coordinator, NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region (VA through ME)
Presenting Organization
Topics
Contact
Maggie See (aquariumlectures@neaq.org, 617-973-6596)
Late each autumn, hundreds of sea turtles strand on Cape Cod due to hypothermia. For more than 25 years, the New England Aquarium and the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary have worked together to rescue, rehabilitate and release thousands of these turtles, mostly Kemp ridleys. Over the last decade, the number of stranded turtles has steadily increased, but the late autumn of 2014 saw an unprecedented event as more than 1200 cold-stunned sea turtles washed ashore. This massive wildlife emergency marshaled an inspiring response that reached from individuals to the federal government. Fortunately, two independent film makers from Seattle, Michele Gomes and Jenny Ting, were on hand to document this phenomenon. They also traveled to Mexico and Texas to tell the larger natural history story of the world’s most endangered sea turtle and how humans pushed a healthy population to the precipice of extinction and are now slowly helping it to recover. Please join Michele and Jenny to view their film, “Saving Sea Turtles: Preventing Extinction” with a panel discussion immediately following.