Coming Out of Its Shell: AMSEAS Promotes Marine Life Awareness

Tucked into a small space in the back of an industrial complex in Westhampton is the home base of the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society. Founding AMSEAS in 2016, lead scientist Robert DiGiovanni never envisioned staying in one place for too long — his team is often on the move, responding to whale or shark, dolphin, seal or sea turtle strandings up and down the East Coast.

“The goal was always to be remote, because we’re always working in someone else’s backyard,” he explained.

And while team members pop in to grab their go-bags and out to shoreline strandings, there are also inhabitants that stay put — at least for a little while — swimming in 3,000-gallon tanks while they rehab. During a visit last month, a cadre of endangered Kemp’s ridley turtles that had been rescued by the organization swam in the pools, breaking the water to welcome visitors and hoping for a snack.

The vision of providing a fully mobile stranding response organization, changed direction during the COVID shutdown. While AMSEAS partners and collaborates with an array of organizations within the Stranding Network, many were forced to pause operations during the pandemic. One partnering agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reached out to AMSEAS in November 2020 to see if they could assist with cold-stunned turtles. Cold-stunning occurs when water temperatures drop rapidly.

By luck, DiGiovanni had purchased the tanks earlier, just on impulse. By Thanksgiving, the critical care sea turtle facility had been built, in just 109 hours. Their first group of rescues came within months. Often turtles rescued elsewhere are flown to AMSEAS through the endangered species rescue organization Turtles Fly Too.

DiGiovanni estimates that he has responded to as many as 6,000 rescues over the course of his conservation career.

They run the gamut from helping to guide stranded animals back out to sea, nurturing turtles sent to their critical care facility, and studying the remains of whales that wash ashore, trying to solve the mysteries of their deaths.

In fact, AMSEAS recently received recognition from NOAA for exemplary service as a member of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network during the pulse of large whale strandings in the Mid-Atlantic from December 2022 through March 2023. The organization is the leading large whale response organization in New York State.

AMSEAS has responded to 15 large whales along the New York and New Jersey coastlines since December 2022.

DiGiovanni recalled that when AMSEAS came on line in 2017, the group averaged between one and three strandings per year. Over time, the numbers increased to the point of a call every 27 days.

NOAA’s recognition letter lauds the organization’s work for “being a key source of information for our management efforts to protect and conserve marine mammals — particularly for species in crisis such as the North Atlantic right whale, as well as all other species of cetaceans and pinnipeds.” (Cetaceans are large marine species like whales, dolphins and sharks; pinnipeds are seals.)

The letter continues, “We have the highest respect for your scientific integrity as you respond to cases and investigate them thoroughly and thoughtfully. It is only because of your hard work that we can obtain the necessary data to try and find answers.”

Three ongoing unusual mortality events (UMEs) are in effect for large whales, including humpback whales, minke whales, and North Atlantic right whales, along the Atlantic coast. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a UME is defined as “a stranding that is unexpected; involves a significant die-off of any marine mammal population; and demands immediate response,” NOAA points out.

Efforts to investigate and understand marine mammal UMEs are critical, as they can be indicators of ocean health and provide insight into larger environmental issues.

As part of the UME investigation process, AMSEAS is working alongside scientists from other organizations in the Greater Atlantic Regional Stranding Network that extends from Maine to Virginia to examine and sample stranded whales, review the data collected, and determine the next steps for the investigation.

“I think our primary objective is to educate the public about what’s going on in their backyard,” DiGiovanni said. “And as we educate them about what we know about animals, we also learn what we don’t know about the animals.

“We learn a lot from every one of these animals,” he added, “but the goal is to try to understand what factors are contributing to these animals washing up and how does that link to the wild population.”

DiGiovanni said that 30 years ago when he’d show up on the beach to do a necropsy, “People would say, ‘I had no idea we had whales here.’ Now, when I go out, people say, ‘I saw a whale the other day.’ That’s a change in our environment.”

And while it seems there are more whales in local seas, the scientist noted there are more people, too. Looking back centuries to early whaling activity, he mused about the changing cetacean population, “How many whales did you have to see to think you could just row out and get one? It wasn’t a rare occurrence.”

Looking ahead to this summer, DiGiovanni is hoping for fewer whale necropsies and more sightings of marine mammals reported. AMSEAS has created a QR code people can scan to report them.

He’s especially interested in sightings of sea turtles during the summer. AMSEAS has been involved in a wintertime seal health assessment project and hopes to embark on a similar study of sea turtles.

Four of the planet’s seven species of sea turtles — the loggerhead, the green sea turtle, Kemp’s ridley and leatherback sea turtle — swim in local waters during the summer. A study of them has not been done in a number of decades, DiGiovanni related.

It’s important for people to know the sea turtles are here; if people don’t know, they don’t know to keep an eye out for them when boating. AMSEAS also advocates for such conservation efforts as the reduction in single use plastics. He recalled the time a 1,000-pound loggerhead washed ashore in Southampton. The necropsy revealed it had a plastic bag in its stomach.

Efforts to educate the public continue, and AMSEAS offers a broad array of educational programs available for children in grades K to 12, as well as adults, covering more than 10 different marine science topics.

An educator at heart, DiGiovanni recalled a time when he actually was teaching a class in marine mammals at the then-Southampton College. The class was supposed to review for a test when a call came in about a stranded dolphin in Sag Harbor. He told the class they could do the scheduled work, or join him in the field.

A student raised his hand and asked, “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”