Employees of the Tybee Department of Public Works spotted the animal on the 19th Street sandbar and alerted Tybee Ocean Rescue. About 9:15 a.m., three lifeguards swam out to the sandbar with a rescue board and ferried the 50-pound turtle back to shore just as they would an injured swimmer.
The lifeguards took the loggerhead by ATV to the Tybee Island Marine Science Center, said Capt. Hunter Robinson of Tybee Ocean Rescue.
There staffers kept it quiet and cool until Georgia sea turtle coordinator Mark Dodd could arrive to take the stranded animal to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island.
Dodd, a senior biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said the turtle’s concave bottom shell and atrophied muscles were signs of poor nutrition. At 30 inches long it was about two-thirds the size of mature females that come up on Georgia beaches to nest.
Strandings of live sea turtles are relatively rare, Dodd said. Strandings of live and dead sea turtles in Georgia are running at the same pace as last year, with 156 strandings reported as of Monday.
One spike of six strandings earlier this summer prompted DNR officials to board shrimp trawlers and examine them for the use of turtle protection devices on nets, Dodd said.
At the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, veterinarian Terry Norton found the stranded turtle to be “pretty debilitated and anemic.” He administered antibiotics and fluids and cleaned off its muddy and barnacle-encrusted shell.
The turtle had no obvious injuries but may have a blockage of its gut from shells or other food it had eaten, Norton said. If so, the fluids often resolve the problem.
By Thursday afternoon, Norton was cautiously optimistic, noting the teenage turtle — of undetermined sex — was “fairly strong” and “bright and alert.”
“I think he’ll do OK, but it’s hard to say,” Norton said.
(Savannah Now - August 16, 2013)
No comments:
Post a Comment