ORP Turtle Patient Update Issue 4|2019

Finally, after nearly two years at the Rescue Centre, (and on International Women’s Day no less!), we discovered Penny very low in the water. She easily dived down after food, so we decided to take her for a swim in the sea to test her buoyancy.

As soon as she was in the ocean, she easily dived down and swam along the bottom, even resting on the reef at points. In classic Penny style she wasn’t all that interested in swimming off quickly; she was more interested in finding snacks on the reef!

Nemo, a very young olive ridley turtle, was found with Dory at Eydhafushi, entangled in a ghost net. Both of Nemo’s front flippers were badly damaged by the ghost net. We had to amputate the front right flipper immediately as it was deeply cut and infected. The left flipper is also infected, with two open joints, but luckily there are no broken bones. We are desperately trying to save this flipper, but he is not using it at the moment.

Nemo also has a shell infection which we are treating him for.

Dory was another very young olive ridley turtle, and a ghost net victim. She was found with Nemo at Eydhafushi.

Dory had a large area of damage to her shoulder region that had to be surgically repaired. She was also suffering from a shell infection.

Unfortunately, Dory passed a few days after arriving at the Rescue Centre. She was incredibly thin and emaciated from the ghost net entanglement. Despite her recovery from surgery, starting treatment, and us managing to get her to eat a bit of food, she passed away.

Giuliana was rescued by Kuredu Resort and sent to us via Atoll Marine Centre. She is a young olive ridley, and another victim of ghost net entanglement. We had to amputate her front flipper when she arrived, however, she is already diving well and can be released as soon as her stitches are out.

Moodhu Vina is a juvenile olive ridley ghost net victim. She was rescued along with another entangled turtle by a local boat crew in Laamu Atoll. The boat crew knew exactly what to do and brought the injured turtles to our Sea Turtle Biologist at Six Senses Laamu!

Following overnight care at Six Senses Laamu, both Moodhu Vina and the other rescued turtle, Big Mummy, was transported to our Turtle Rescue Centre for medical care.

Big Mummy arrived on 13th March 2019. She was found entangled along with a juvenile olive ridley (Moodhu Vina) in Laamu Atoll by a local boat crew. Luckily the boat crew knew what to do – they brought both turtles to our Sea Turtle Biologist at Six Senses Laamu. The next day both ghost net victims were transferred to the Rescue Centre.

Big Mummy arrived with an abnormal flipper, however an x-ray revealed that she manged to escape the ghost net mostly unscathed. Her flipper worked well with just a minor finger joint dislocation – which could be an old injury and did not affect her swimming. She happily returned to the ocean after two days at the Rescue Centre.

Juanita is still suffering from buoyancy. She has been moved to Atoll Marine Centre for further rehabilitation as we needed the tank space for critical patients.

As Nessy does not need critical care, she has been moved to Atoll Marine Centre to make room for turtles who require surgery.

Tiff was sent to live at Marine Savers. She spent a short time with us. We X-rayed her and found she has lung tears and a lot of air inside her shell. This is not something we can fix at this time, so she has gone to be looked after by another centre as we needed the space for critical care turtles.

Heidi remains healthy and eats well. She is still not using her front flipper.

We have been X-raying Eve’s flipper every few weeks to monitor her and the x-rays have revealed a new problem: She has an area of bone loss in her shoulder joint, a condition that suggests she has a bone infection in her joint.

This is a difficult condition to treat, that typically presents 4-6 weeks after turtles enter rehabilitation. Infection from initial wounds eventually seeds to the elbow usually, but sometimes to shoulder joints.

Boston is doing very well. His 3 flippers that were operated on have completely healed and he has full function. He has had his stitches out and is ready for release in the next couple of days!

Happy Feet has completely healed from his surgery and is fully recovered with stitches out. Happy Feet will be released in the next couple of days.

Lakmon is also doing well and his skin is mostly recovered from infection. He is healing well from surgery and he is diving and eating. Lakmon is a strong turtle and hopefully he can have his stitches out soon and be released.

Lynn’s x-ray showed a lot of internal abnormalities. She has a huge amount of gas build up including in her neck. She has what appears to be large abnormal distended pockets in her lung called bullae. She is not eating and is looking very sick.

Lynn had a procedure this week to remove the air from her shell cavity. This is normally unsuccessful, with the air just returning straight away. She is one of our first patients that we saw a dramatic improvement after this procedure. We removed over 12L of air from her shell and her buoyancy has improved by over 50%. We also repeated her X-rays. We are going to repeat this procedure to see if we can see a bigger improvement.

Artemis is doing well and has started diving! He had a small surgery to debride away some of the infection from his front flipper and stitch it into a more correct alignment. Unfortunately, as he arrived to us with an old wound, we are unable to do much about his broken bone.

We are hoping that he forms enough scar tissue for it to be stable enough for him to swim with this flipper, but we will have to wait and see.

Jamie is remains buoyant and is not eating properly. We have been crab hunting a lot to try to tempt her, but she has not even wanted to eat crab the last few days. We even tried shrimp too,but she refused all of our offerings.