From the Flight Deck

They just want to get back home to where it’s warm. Pilot Chuck Yanke aims to help them.

Chuck and his copilot, Matt Barnes, arrived at Marshfield Municipal Airport, on Massachusetts’ South Shore, late Monday afternoon, Dec. 8, to get an early start the next morning. Chuck and Matt flew in from Georgia to chauffer 76 rescued endangered sea turtles back south for further rehabilitation prior to being released in warmer water.

Copilot Matt Barnes, left, and pilot Chuck Yanke, await a planeload of turtles to arrive for them to transport to rehab facilities in Florida.

What happens, according to Kate Sampson, is sea turtles such as endangered Kemp’s ridleys and loggerheads get caught in the crook of Cape Cod as they attempt to head south to warmer water after having traveled north chasing the abundance of food that follows the increasingly warming water. Kate is the Sea Turtle Stranding Coordinator for NOAA Fisheries for the Northeast Region, which runs from Maine to Virginia.

“The turtles strand along the beaches of Cape Cod because they get trapped in Cape Cod Bay as they try to migrate south to get into warmer water, and their migration is delayed,” she said. “So, the water temperature cools down so much that they don’t feed, their immune system becomes suppressed, they become really sick, and eventually they wash up.”

Kate says an average of 750 turtles strand on Cape Cod beaches every year.

“There’s very nice people in the area who walk the beach looking for where they wash up, and they call the turtle ambulance, and they pick them up and bring them back to be stabilized, and guys like me haul them away,” said Chuck, as he waited for the turtles to arrive early Monday.

Specifically, volunteers with Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary walk Cape beaches looking for stranded turtles during the cold season. Rescued turtles are taken to New England Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts, for rehabilitating. But then more turtles are rescued as the fall turns colder and winter follows, and the hospital runs out of room. So, to free up space for more turtles Kate coordinates transport of able turtles to other recovery partners who continue to nurse them to good health and eventually release them into warm water down south.

Kate Sampson, left yellow, and Ben Garman, center yellow, carry endangered turtles needing rehabilitation to the plane that will take them to Florida.

This day Chuck and Matt, who were flying for conservation flight organization Lighthawk, were planning to hand off their passengers to five facilities in Orlando, West Palm Beach, and Marathon Key, in Florida. Chuck flies a Pilatus PC-12 turboprop aircraft, which, with its passenger seats removed, they filled with the turtles packed in color-coded by destination vegetable packing boxes covered with towels to keep the reptiles warm.

“I can carry a lot of turtles,” Chuck said. “We’re getting 76; our record is a hundred. They fill the entire plane, from ceiling to floor to back of the pilot’s seat to the luggage area. My wife complains she never gets to come along because turtles always have her seat.”

Kate and New England Aquarium staffers began packing the turtles at 4:30 that morning to arrive at Marshfield Airport by 7:30. The pilots needed to depart by 8:30 to make their Florida rounds and then fly home to southern Georgia where Matt lives and Chuck winters.

Kate, who has been with NOAA since 2010, says the agency started flying turtles to other rehab facilities regularly since 2014, when more than 1,200 turtles stranded on the Cape. She said they have up to 25 partner organizations who will take in sick turtles, depending on their room, with about 20 being used each year.

The program works efficiently because of the volunteer pilots who can relocate the turtles quickly.

Chuck says he flies turtles two or three times a year. Chuck and his wife hail from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they run their manufacturing company, Vulcan Global Manufacturing Solutions.

“We’ve been doing this for over 10 years and we’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “We started with just one employee, and now we’ve got about a hundred. We’ve been very fortunate, and we feel strongly we should give back. Some people give back in different ways. My wife and I have always been big on animals, and turtles happen to be one of them.”

Turtles are loaded into this Pilatus PC-12 turboprop to fly to Florida.

Chuck became aware of the need for volunteer pilots through a Pilatus pilots organization.

“There was a posting on POPA (Pilatus Owners and Pilots Association) saying they needed to move turtles from the Boston area down to Florida,” he said. “The kids had already been there for Christmas, and this was between Christmas and New Year’s, and my wife said, ‘Why don’t we give the turtles a Christmas present.’ So I can blame all this on my wife,” he said with a chuckle. “So, we started doing it and we’ve had a great time. We’ve met a ton of people. We’ve moved a lot of turtles.”

That’s not all they’ve moved.

“This has led us into moving a lot of other animals, too, for zoos,” he said. “We’ve moved mountain lions, wolves, snow leopards, pandas, monkeys, parrots, whooping cranes. It’s very difficult for zoos to move wild animals on a commercial flight. And driving them, they’ll be in a moving van or a truck for 24 or 36 hours, and we can do it in just a couple hours. So, we have a lot of fun with that also.”

Marshfield Airport has been a turtle flight center for the past few years.

“We’ve been involved in turtle rescue flights since 2018,” said Assistant Airport Manager Ben Garman. “I’ve been involved personally for that amount of time, as well. Usually we’ll see about five or six flights a year, depending. It’s very exciting for the airport and positive for general aviation as well, to highlight that these are all volunteer pilots who volunteer their time and aircraft to help move turtles down to warmer waters.”

Copilot Matt Barnes loads turtles into the PC-12.

Ben is a staff member of Shoreline Aviation, which, as the airport’s fixed base operator manages the airport for the town of Marshfield. Ben and fellow Shoreline staffers help move the turtles from aquarium vans to the plane. Shoreline also helps the cause by waiving all plane service fees and giving a discounted fuel price, he said. And when necessary because of the cold, Shoreline will make heated hangar space available.

“The people at the FBO here have been incredibly gracious, letting us load and unload – in a heated hangar!” Chuck exclaimed. “When it’s 20 degrees out, we really appreciate that!”

Outside the hangar, Chuck fires up the turboprop, and he and Matt go through the flight checklist as it warms up. When they signal to Ben that they are ready, he directs them off the ramp and onto Taxiway Alpha, where they taxi to the end of the runway. With the familiar roar of the powerful PC-12, Chuck, Matt and 76 turtles lift into the air, swing left, and head south.