Videos of Mini Ming and Ollie Enjoying a Healthy Snack!







The South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Rescue Program wants to start your new year off with a smile! Enjoy the videos of Mini Ming and Ollie, two green sea turtles currently receiving treatment in the Aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital, enjoying their favorite snack!

 

The Sea Turtle Hospital offers a variety of enrichment to all of its patients. One form of enrichment for green sea turtles is to offer vegetation. Hospital staff and interns have built feeders for the vegetables which allow the sea turtles to feed naturally from the bottom of the tank.

 

 

Mini Ming was found floating in Mingo Creek at Kiawah Island, SC. Notice the barnacles on the carapace (shell). A few larger barnacles on the carapace of sea turtles is normal and does not harm the animal. It is when a sea turtle becomes lethargic in the ocean for extended periods of time due to illness or injury that the barnacle load becomes so great, that secondary infection could result. 

 

 

Ollie was admitted to the Sea Turtle Hospital in October of 2012 with multiple boat strikes, the most severe to the upper jaw. We are thrilled to see how well Ollie is healing - the wound to his jaw has almost completely fused allowing him to eat with ease!

 

Come visit Mini Ming, Ollie, and the 15 other patients on a behind-the-scenes tour of our Sea Turtle Hospital!

 

Happy New Year!

Whitney Daniel

Gumby's One Year Anniversary

If you have made a visit to the South Carolina Aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital recently, you have met our spunky loggerhead Gumby! His feisty attitude and curious nature always make him a visitor favorite. If you are new to Gumby’s story, you can read about his admission and his December update here. It is truly remarkable to see how far Gumby has come just in one year!

Gumby was found stranded on the beach of Kiawah Island on June 26, 2011.

Over the past 12 months with the help of a healthy diet, vitamins and exposure to UV light, staff and volunteers have watched drastic changes in Gumby's size and demeanor. Upon admittance Gumby weighed only 6.5 pounds, had severe metabolic bone disease, and was extremely lethargic. He is now 6 times that original weight,  weighing in at 39 pounds and has also almost doubled in length. We also have seen a significant change with his demeanor, watching transform into the feisty sea turtle he is today.

Plastron comparison of Gumby over the year.

Profile comparison showing not only Gumby's changes physically but also the vibrant change in coloration.

A great shot to fully grasp how Gumby has grown in just one year!

Regardless of Gumby's troubled past, his natural instincts are still present. Gumby shows off his hunting abilities in the video below enjoy!

Come see Gumby's remarkable changes first hand on one of tours!

Whitney Daniel

Sea Turtle Biologist

Because sea turtles can't surf the internet, continued...

During Sea Turtle Hospital tours, we often get the question, "Do sea turtles have feeling on their shells?" We are here to tell you, "YES!" In the wild, some sea turtles would naturally scratch their capace or shell on rocky ledges or coral reefs.

For our last entry in the environmental enrichment blog series, we would like to show you how sea turtles scratch their shells in the Aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital. Since we are unable to provide rocky ledges and coral reefs in the hospital tanks, we build square PVC structures that hang in the water column for sea turtles to use as backscratchers. The green sea turtles are especially fond of the PVC backscratchers, although some didn’t read the instruction manual and use it to sleep on top of like 18th Green below!

The following video is Fisher, one of the NC cold-stunned green sea turtles, loving the backscratcher we recently put in the tank.



There is no room in Frosty's tank section to hang a backscratcher so "he" uses the filter return pipe to scratch his shell.



We have found that the loggerhead and Kemp's ridley sea turtles are much less likely to use the backscratchers the way the greens do (although they do use them in other ways). They enjoy other types of shell stimulation such as water pouring into their tanks and scrub brushes. The next video is the Kemp's ridley, Little Debbie, enjoying a back scrub.



This concludes the sea turtle enrichment blog series from the South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Rescue Program. We hope you have enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed putting it together! If you visit the Sea Turtle Hospital, let us know that you that you saw the enrichment blogs so we can show you some of this enrichment in person. All tour days and times are on the main hospital page. We hope to see you soon!

Megan and Kelly

Because sea turtles can't surf the internet, continued...

Another type of environmental enrichment that we use in the Sea Turtle Hospital is colorful Jolly Balls in the turtle’s tanks. While it would be nice to play a good game a fetch for mental and physical activity, the Jolly Balls serve a much simpler purpose - to add color and dimension to their tanks and help break up the sterile tank environment in which they live.

The ocean is full of natural stimuli for sea turtles. They interact with their environment more than people may think. The video below is just another example of these animals interacting with the environment that we provide. It is a short video of 18th Green enjoying the pressure of incoming water to fill the tank.

Note: 18th Green was admitted with a severe intestinal impaction that caused the turtle to float with the posterior (rear) end up. This caused the neck skin to pinch between the skull and shell, creating a callous on the top of the neck that enlarged over time. The "lump" doesn't appear to be causing any discomfort and is being monitored closely by Dr. Boylan, the Aquarium's veterinarian.

Tomorrow's blog is the last of the series so be sure to check back!

Megan and Kelly

Because sea turtles can't search the internet, continued...

We treat three species of sea turtles in our hospital: green, Kemp's ridley, and loggerhead. To keep them all mentally stimulated, we do our best to offer natural food enrichment. Green sea turtles are primarily vegetarians and feed on sea grasses and algae in the ocean. Although we can't feed this normal ocean vegetation, we do give them a diet consisting of a variety of garden vegetables including but not limited to romaine and red leaf lettuces, cabbage, collard greens and bell peppers.

Below is a video of juvenile green sea turtles feeding from PVC feeders made especially to hold vegetation and sink to the bottom of the tank. This allows the turtles to feed as they would in the wild. Enjoy...



For our loggerheads and larger Kemp's ridleys, a part of their natural diet is hard shelled prey. To give them a hunting opportunity, we offer them live blue crabs. We clip the crab's claws to prevent any unnecessary injury to the turtles, but interestingly enough, most of the turtles disarm the crabs first anyways! The more "skilled" hunters remove both of the claws before moving on to the rest of the crab. Some of our turtles aren't that patient though, and just dig right in! It gets interesting when a blue crab hides under or near the rear end of our turtles to prevent being discovered. It's usually a short lived disguise. Occasionally once the chase is on, a blue crab will sneak through a pipe cuff....and from there on out the hospital staff gets a good laugh as the turtle swims around with the pipe cuff on it's head, convinced that's where the crab went! Check out our video below of Little Pritchard's short lived chase of a live blue crab!

Little Debbie, a large juvenile Kemp's ridley, is known for an entertaining crab chase. Follow this link for great footage of Little Debbie in action! http://bit.ly/ijjAWd

All of our live blue crabs are brought in by donation. Big shout out to our regular suppliers that help us feed crabs to the sea turtles year round: Terry Heinz - long time SCA volunteer and a dedicated crab supplier (pictured below), Bill Thorsby, Wilby Halsapple, Jim and the kids, Ernie, and Rachel Brennan - the turtles thank you!

We hope you're enjoying our enrichment blog series. Check back tomorrow for another blog, you won't want to miss out!

Megan and Kelly

Because sea turtles can't surf the internet, continued...

We give several types of food enrichment and the one featured here is the fish pop. Fish pops are our take on a popsicle! Only the turtles don’t get a choice between grape and cherry. They get a choice between mackerel, smelt, capelin, or herring! We take a portion of their fish diet and freeze it into an extra large popsicle. It is a riot to watch the turtles nose the floating fish pop around the tank trying to get their mouths around it. The fish pop melts over time giving the turtles a tasty reward for their efforts. This type of enrichment breaks up the normal feeding routine while providing their daily allotment of food.

Enjoy the video of Santee with her fish pop!




Be sure to check in tomorrow to learn about two additional types of food enrichment!

Megan and Kelly