Today we have a green sea turtle Kenny, who's having an endoscopy.
He came to us two months ago with
strike injury and long term floating
so we can see that he's got a big piece of bone out of his shell on the back.
And he's been floating bum up,
for probably many months in the ocean and two months in here with us.
His blood parameters are deteriorating, his demeanor is deteriorating.
So we're doing the endoscopy today to see if we can figure out exactly
what else is going on inside him, because there's more than just
the boat strike injury. We might find something that we can fix.
So fingers crossed, it's going to be a positive outcome.
Our time starts now.
Can you take a picture, see the camera icon?
And it's hard to
focus because of all the flocculant fluid.
I think the propeller did the damage to him and he's just hanging in there
long after the initial injury.
Our initial view inside the turtle suggests there's quite significant peritonitis.
In a turtle, we call it coelomitis
but it's the same thing as peritonitis in another mammal.
We're trying to remove some of the fluid to improve our view.
The fluid is quite cloudy, and so it's difficult to focus.
Again, inflate.
So what we can see so far is there's areas of lung that aren't inflating
We're seeing blood vessels in the mesentery
that go to his intestines that are full of blood clots.
So these are not good things.
We're also seeing the inside of the wound that the boat propeller has done to him.
And we can see a chronic inflammatory response.
I don't like the poor inflation.
I don't like that colour red that happens. And see, he's going
obviously septic.
At least we have information
to make the decision with.
So we can see massive evidence of infection inside the turtle,
which is what we were suspicious of, but we were hoping not to find.
So this evidence here,
plus all of these internal hemorrhages
and abnormal lumps and bumps
suggesting that he's got abscessation inside his coelomic cavity
as well as lots and lots of fluid with cloudy fibrin tags in it.
He's struggling to fight off an overwhelming infection.
And he's been on antibiotics with us for six weeks
and we have not been able to turn him around.
So the kindest thing we can do for him is end his suffering.
Nurse: How much do you want Rosie?
Twenty.
I'm glad we did him today.
So we had already treated him with antibiotics and all of the usual treatment
that we gave to a floating turtle and he was not responding.
And so that's why we looked further today.
The damage from the propeller into his coelomic cavity was severe.
And it is extraordinary that he had survived as long as he had in the ocean.
The take-home message from all of this is that we need to be very careful
when we're boating in the oceans, because Kenny was at least 60 years old.
He had probably another 60 good years left
in him of helping to produce more baby turtles.
Now that chance is over because he had a collision with a boat.
So you never know when an animal is going to come up for air when you're boating.
And so you need to be careful, to not speed.
and be considerate of the other creatures that are sharing the planet with us.
So the dolphins, the dugongs,
the whales, the turtles, all need to come up for air.
And so they can all suddenly appear on the surface.
We need to be respectful of their needs.