WINDY. Fishing trip with Alex and Cindy is postponed to tomorrow.
Plan B. Go snorkeling.
This was a huge
sea turtle that
swam
past us.
Just kidding. Plan B is a trip to the Marathon Turtle Hospital. No, I am not kidding. It's an actual hospital for sea turtles, with an operating room and everything. Originally it was a motel with a salt water swimming pool. The motel is no longer active and the rooms are empty. But they did use many of the rooms recently to house turtles in plastic kiddie swimming pools as they had so many patients.
The hospital does rescue, rehabilitation and release. The recent cold spell was the longest on record in the Keys. The last cold snap of this duration was in the 1880’s
and it was for 6 days. This cold spell lasted 8 days and as I’ve said before, really took it’s toll on the creatures. The sea turtles get a type of hypothermia called “cold stunned” and they become stranded on the surface of the water unable to dive and slowly starve to death. People who found any of these turtles contact the authorities and they contact the animal rescue services. There have been over a thousand turtles rescued so far in Florida. The hospital we visited rescued 178 turtles in 3 days. That’s almost double what they have in a year. Most of the turtles have been treated and released.They do have some turtles that are residents and are used for education purposes. One is blind, some only have a couple flippers and such making it impossible for them to return to the wild. Fishing line in a huge culprit. Fishermen throw it overboard and the turtle swims along and it gets wrapped around their head or flippers. Plastic bags thrown in the water look like a jelly fish to a turtle and they eat them. They can get caught in their gut and cause an impaction. At the turtle hospital they can perform surgery and fix some of these guys.
While they recuperate they
live in these blue tanks
until strong enough to swim
in the large pool.
This cute little guy is a baby Loggerhead turtle
at the hospital.
It was a beautiful evening so
we sat on the bow of the
boat and watched the sunset.
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