So yesterday we had a little green sea turtle come in from Ninety Mile Beach
so up in Northland. It was found stranded on the beach by a member of
the public and the Department of Conservation went and flew it down to us
when it was clear it was sick.
This little green turtles the first one that
we've had for the season that came in after some big storms which is about
when we would expect to see a sick turtle wash up in New Zealand and this
one's got the worst condition shell that we've seen. So it's covered in a really
thick moss which is not something we usually see down this part of the
world. It's got a lot of goose barnacles as well on it, which is something that we
often do see in a sick turtle. Under all this moss and all these barnacles you
can see the brown, which is the normal layer on the top of the shell, then this
black line that's abnormal shell and then this yellow is where some quite deep
tissues come away. Makes us worried thats left infection and stuff inside
so we'll have to have a really good look, we'll get some X-rays today, see what we can see.
When he first came in, like a few hours ago, it was 14 so it'd be good just to
see if he's increased in temp while in a warmer room and warmer environment.
The warmer we can get them the better they can process their meds, so we really want to
get them up to about 20-24 degrees.
So we did X-rays, we took some bloods and we
started supportive care so we put them into a intensive care unit essentially
where we have warm water dripping over just to start to slowly warm the
body back up to a better temperature.
So the endangered green sea turtle that we
had in recently, unfortunately the day after it arrived, we found it dead
when we went to do treatments in the afternoon and we've now, since then, done a
full post-mortem on it and the condition of those bony plates on the top of the
shell was the worst that we've seen through here. A significant amount of
that damage was actually caused by the sun. So when a turtle gets sick they often
float on the top of the water and that exposes them to sunburn that's part of
what we're seeing with the shell of this turtle. The second thing that we noticed
as soon as we opened up the turtle and had a look at the inside of it, was that
there were no fat stores at all. So usually when you open up a turtle you
can see quite a nice layer of fat, particularly if it's a healthy turtle or
if it's one that has been doing well you can see a really nice
thick layer of fat and that's the body supply, so that's what they use for their
energy and to keep themselves going and unfortunately with this little one it
just had no fat at all. But what we did find in the intestines was two bits
of plastic as well as a big long piece of twine, so the twine in this case was
all knotted up together which can cause obstructions and can cause
problems passing through. Another reminder to ourselves that when we're
out there in the environment, making sure that anything we take out there comes back.
Go and enjoy the beach, go and enjoy being out on your boat and fishing but
bring everything you take out back make sure you don't leave anything behind.