Marine Wildlife Stranding weekend with Wellfleet Bay Mass Audubon

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Examining the dead torpedo ray.

This past weekend, NECWA staff were part of the Marine Wildlife Stranding Field School offered by Mass Audubon at Wellfleet Bay. Here staff and participants focused their weekend on the marine animals that strand along the shore of Cape Cod.

Looking for live and stranded animals on the beach.=
Activities for the weekend included walking the beaches to look for cold-stunned sea turtles and ocean sunfish. And participants were involved with necropsies (animal autopsies) of quite a few different species including a loggerhead sea turtle, a torpedo ray and an ocean sunfish.

Bob Prescott leading the loggerhead sea turtle necropsy.
Bob Prescott, Director of Mass Audubon and Krill Carson (NECWA) provided talks on sea turtles and ocean sunfish for Field School participants, helping to put it all together.

Over the course of the weekend, one live Kemp's ridley sea turtle was found on Skaket Beach and transported to the rehab facility at the New England Aquarium. Can't wait for next weekends Field School.

Michael and Bob putting the dead torpedo ray in the sling.
Check out the wonderful programs offered by Mass Audubon at Wellfleet Bay. Go to www.massaudubon.org/Nature_Connection/Sanctuaries/Wellfleet/index.php

Images from our Ocean Sunfish Necropsy in Provincetown:

Dead ocean sunfish. 






 Images from the loggerhead sea turtle and torpedo ray necropsy lead by Bob Prescott, Director of Mass Audubon:







Heading to the beaches with Dennis Murley to look for stranded marine animals:





Images of the live Kemp's ridely found in Orleans this weekend. 




Walking the beaches of Skaket, Orleans and finding dead seabirds and one dead torpedo ray.












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