TwoGether

Wednesday 2/8/12.              The literature for the Dolphin Research Center says many of the activities are "walk-ins welcome".  But when we arrived the schedule for a dip with a dolphin was already booked for the day.  There are four openings for tomorrow so we signed up for two of them.  But they did allowed us to visit the facility and watch the training and other shows taking place.  It was munchkin day…there were about thirty preschoolers there and they were fascinated watching the dolphins do their stuff.

After lunch we found ourselves at the hospital!  We ended up at The Turtle Hospital in Marathon, FL.  It has its own x-ray room, operating room and recovery and rehab center.

Sea turtles suffer many maladies.  Among them the most common are impacted digestive tracks, entanglement with rope or fishing line, boat propeller strikes, and fibropapilloma tumors.  Many times a sick turtle will be found floating on the top of the water.  This can be caused by gas in the digestive system caused by impaction resulting from eating too many hard to digest foods, like small crabs, or from ingesting plastic bags that look like jelly fish to a turtle.  They will swallow most anything.  The gas that forms in the digestive tract ‘floats’ the turtle and makes it impossible to reach the sea grass  their main source of nutrition.   

Boat propeller strikes can separate the lung from the shell and a bubble of air will form under the shell and ‘float’ the turtle.  They attach a weight to the shell to compensate, in much the same way that a scuba diver wares a weighted belt to be able to sink with a tank of air on their back.

The other big problem is entanglement with rope or fishing line.  This causes a tourniquet around a flipper and can cause it to eventually self-amputate and become infected. 

Fibropapilloma is a virus that is found in sea turtles.  It appears not to be spread to other animals but has been carried by humans who were working with infected turtles in one facility, and then worked with non-infected turtles who contracted the disease.  The Turtle Hospital veterinarians are skilled in removing the tumors which grow in soft tissue like that around the eye.  The turtles remain quarantined until no new tumors are evident. 

The goal of the hospital is to return a healthy turtle to the wild.

The Turtle Hospital Visitor Center has lots of displays and a video that takes you through an operation.  An additional slide presentation is shown in the hospital lobby.

All of the workers at the hospital are veterinary doctors or other medically trained professionals, some of which donate their time.  It was great to see the work they are doing.