By Carol Britton Meyer

What started out last Tuesday, December 2 as a normal morning at work loading lobster traps onto the Acushnet Marine truck at Hull Gut turned out to be anything but when the four crew members ended up rescuing a critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle from the water.

**RESCUE ME:** Kelly MacKenzie holds the rare sea turtle named ‘Tugboat’ that was rescued from the cold water at Hull Gut last week. The turtle was brought to the New England Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy, where it is recovering from exposure to the cold. [Courtesy photo]

Kelly MacKenzie, owner Mike McDevitt, and co-workers Liam Borza and Jodi Clefstad were going about their business at Pemberton when they spotted a sea turtle – whom they later named “Tugboat” – in distress close to shore.

“At first I thought it was a fish,” MacKenzie told The Hull Times. “However, Mike recognized right away that it was a sea turtle and knew that it wasn’t supposed to be around this time of year.”

They immediately contacted Hull Harbormaster Kurt Bornheim, who told them to call the New England Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy.

“That’s what we did, and we were told to try to get the turtle out of the water and that an animal ambulance would soon be on its way,” MacKenzie recalled.

She and the others were able to gently lift the sea turtle out of the water and place him in a bin with seaweed.

“It was a team effort,” she said. “We were all really excited and started taking photos.”

The ambulance arrived within 30 minutes. Tugboat is continuing his recovery in the Sea Turtle Hospital after the staff there kept him in a heated environment for three days to slowly raise his body temperature.

“We were told that he’ll be there for about a month,” MacKenzie said. “We get regular updates by email.”

Kemp’s ridley is a small sea turtle species that is rare and endangered and frequently is cold-stunned in New England’s waters. The hospital rehabilitates hundreds of injured turtles annually before returning them to the ocean.

MacKenzie is asking Hull residents to be on high alert because sea turtles are showing up lately and getting beached at the high-tide mark in Hull and the surrounding area.

“When the temperatures are low, they only have about two hours out of the water to survive,” she explained. “Sea turtles usually would have migrated by now, but they are getting turned around by high winds and other conditions” and losing their way.

MacKenzie was “super excited” about seeing a sea turtle because she has always loved them but had never seen one in real life until Tugboat’s rescue.

“I come from a Hull lobstering family and always heard stories about how there used to be a lot of them around, but not in recent years,” MacKenzie said.

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