First live stranding of 2011

At 1.8 kg (4 pounds), the juvenile Kemp's ridley admitted Friday evening is the 2nd smallest sea turtle ever treated by the South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Rescue Program. The call about the stranding came from the SCDNR while Veterinarian, Dr. Boylan, and I were attending the International Sea Turtle Conference. Luckily, Aquarium Sea Turtle Biologist, Christi Hughes and hospital intern, Meghan Walsh were on hand to take care of this little guy.

A little turtle with a big name
The turtle is being named after the Folly Beach fishing pier where it was caught: Edwin S. Taylor. It is a big name for a little turtle but Kemp's ridleys are known for their big personalities, so we are pretty sure he will grow into it. Although the fisherman was able to remove the hook before it was swallowed, the turtle is suffering from dehydration and skin lesions. Medical treatments include antibiotics, fluid therapy and external treatment of lesions.

This new stranding brings the Aquarium's sea turtle patient load to 20, the most ever treated at once. But coastal waters are quickly warming and the Sea Turtle Rescue Team is looking forward to releasing many of the rehabilitated patients over the next month or so. Releases are temperature dependant so the dates are not determined yet. Keep checking back to the blog if you are interested in finding out more about these releases.

Thanks to all involved in the rescue of this animal!
Kelly Thorvalson

Earth Fare donates organic produce to feed endangered green sea turtles!

Since the admission of eight new cold-stunned juvenile green sea turtles last December, we’ve been researching the nutritional value of various produce items in an effort to provide these turtles with foods that best resemble the omnivorous diet they would be consuming at this age in the wild. We began supplementing their daily fish diet with veggies such as romaine lettuce, bell peppers, and kale. The greens happily munched the veggies from newly designed PVC feeders that allowed them to feed off the bottom of their tank in the same way they would graze from a seagrass bed in the wild. Unfortunately, feeding this new produce-based diet to ten turtles on a daily basis was financially straining our resources. We decided to contact John Messinger, Manager at Earth Fare, a local health food supermarket in the West Ashley Windermere Shopping Center known for its selection of local and organic farm fresh fruits and vegetables. John had previously visited our Sea Turtle Hospital and was excited about supporting our efforts to rehabilitate endangered green sea turtles. Earth Fare is now providing us with a weekly donation of produce for our turtles! In addition to staples like romaine lettuce, our greens are now grazing on delicious dandelion greens, cabbage, gold beet leaves, and brussel sprouts on the stalk as seen on the photo below.


On behalf of the South Carolina Aquarium and our ten green sea turtles, we’d like to thank John, Matt Setter and Linda Helms from the produce department, as well as the rest of the Earth Fare crew for all their efforts to help us keep our sea turtles as healthy as possible while undergoing rehabilitation in our Sea Turtle Hospital. Be sure to check Earth Fare out online at http://www.earthfare.com/ and enjoy the video below!


Christi Hughes, Sea Turtle Biologist

Little Debbie being released in Florida on Thursday!

On May 22, 2009, a critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle was found on DeBordieu Beach in Georgetown County, SC. The turtle was very thin and barely hanging on to life. Upon arrival at the Aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital, “Little Debbie” was diagnosed with severe pneumonia and a broken humerus in her front left flipper. It took over a month of nebulizers, antibiotic injections and supportive care for hospital staff to be confident she would survive, although treatments lasted for much longer.

After twenty-three months and a tremendous amount of medical support and care, Little Debbie is being released back into the ocean on Thursday. Without a doubt, she has left a lasting impression on those that have come in close contact with her. She will likely be remembered most for her spunky attitude, often splashing those that get near her tank, and because she is the most fun to watch chase and catch live blue crabs of any sea turtle ever treated in our program!

Many ask if Little Debbie will be o.k. in the wild after being in captive care for almost 2 years. I can say "yes" with confidence for several reasons: Sea turtles are remarkably instinctive and don't imprint like birds or mammals. They are benefitted by their small brains in this fact. Their instincts drive their behavior and you can't take this instinct away in 2 years. I always like to tell folks that our patients “will bite the hands that feed them.” Little Debbie is spunky, quick, and honestly, could care less about us. We are ok with this because our entire goal is to heal them and to get them back into the ocean to rejoin the wild population, in hopes that they will contribute reproductively to that population.

Little Debbie will be picked up very early Thursday morning to be transported to Cape Canaveral, Florida for release. If you’d like to see her one last time, you can visit on one of the Wednesday Sea Turtle Hospital tours, 11:30am or 1pm.

To all of our donors, Stranded Turtle Adoptive Parents, visitors, partners, and volunteers – thank you so much for all you do to make these successes possible! Kelly Thorvalson

Hanahan Middle School saves sea turtles

Hanahan Middle School (HMS) has won the South East Regionals of the Lexus Eco Challenge for the second consecutive year and has been invited to participate in the final round competing against 15 other schools nationwide for $30,000. Team members include 8th graders Sarah Chandler, Robby Cooper, Amber Dove, Kileigh Joseph, Erika MacGregor, Jonelle Miller, Savannah Moore, Pe'ton Wright and are led by 7th grade science teacher Alexandra Davis.

For the final round, the HMS team is focusing on saving sea turtles, specifically South Carolina's state reptile, the loggerhead sea turtle. This threatened species nests on our beaches each summer. Over the years, their populations have declined due to manmade pressures including coastal development and litter. In order to help save sea turtles, the team hopes to spread this message though various projects.

HMS was challenged to bring in plastic grocery bags to recycle instead of sending to the landfill. They rose to that challenge and brought in a total of 12,700 bags! To replace these bags, reusable bags were sold to raise money for SEWEE. With over 100 sold so far, you can still purchase a turtle bag for only $2.

The Eco Challenge Team visited Hanahan City Council to promote the ban of mass balloon releases in SC by presenting a petition of over 80 community signatures. Letters were also sent to local representatives in support of the bill currently on the House floor. Eco Challenge and Jr. Beta teamed up with Clean City Sweep and cleaned up Brittlebank Park. Being a marsh front park, it is important to pick up the litter before it reaches the oceans. We collected 34 bags of trash, 4 tires, 2 large pieces of dock, and several other interesting items. The team is currently painting a trash can which will be placed in the park promoting the message "Keep it clean as can be, for the turtles of the sea".

The team's favorite part of the project was visiting the South Carolina Aquarium where they learned how to diagnose sick and injured sea turtles in a classroom laboratory and visited the Aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital to watch the 19 patients being fed. They also raised funds to become Stranded Turtle Adoptive Parents to current turtle patients and collected various wish list items to donate to the hospital.

If you would like to learn more about the team's efforts and see their interviews with local scientists, visit them on Facebook http://on.fb.me/gofSsP and YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/ecochallenge2011.

Together we can make a difference.

Alexandra Davis
7th Grade Science
Hanahan Middle School

Girl Scout Troop raises funds and awareness to help sea turtles

I am amazed at the initiative and generosity young members of our community are capable of demonstrating. On February 19th, a clever coterie of Girl Scouts from Troop 807 in Mount Pleasant visited our Sea Turtle Hospital to learn more about the dangers sea turtles face in the wild and what we do to rehabilitate them for release back into the Atlantic Ocean. What truly impressed me was that this visit represented the culmination of months of time and effort these girls spent working to help sea turtles!

Troop 807 held multiple fundraising drives at schools and other locales in our community and presented the hospital with both a monetary donation to help provide medical treatment to our patients and much-needed supplies like dish soap, bleach, pens and pencils, even a blender! These Girl Scouts also became Stranded Sea Turtle Adoptive Parents and are so excited about seeing some of the turtles they met during their visit return to the wild at an upcoming release this spring.

The girls created and illustrated an educational booklet titled “How to Save a Sea Turtle.” This full-color booklet contains simple messages about what people can do to help sea turtles.

Finally, the Troop created and brought along “Symphony,” a life-size paper-mâché nesting sea turtle. Symphony joined us for our group picture on the Aquarium’s harbor deck, and we are hoping to incorporate this local work of art into our hospital for tour guests to see and appreciate.
Joy Gay, Matilda Seay, Amaya Clark, Breanna Wilson, Jessica Leiker, Kendra Ruggiero, Sierra Mancine, Emma Lang, Sutton Allen, and Troop 807 leaders Christine and Katie: Thank you for all you’ve done to help sea turtles!

Christi Hughes
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