More than 800 baby turtles rescued from storm drains in 3 N.J. beach towns
Updated May 06, 2021;
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.