Saving sea turtles at the Animal Care and Rescue Center
Baltimore (WHTM) Most of the animal rescue work of the National Aquarium’s Animal Care and Rescue Center takes place in the ACRC building. But sea turtles are treated at the main aquarium, in an area away from visitors.
“We have several sea turtle species that are undergoing rehabilitation for the purpose of going back out into their natural environment and continuing their species,” says Jennifer Dittmar, the aquarium’s Director of Animal Rescue.
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The aquarium staff interacts with the turtles as little as possible.
“We really don’t want them to get acclimated to people,” Jennifer explains. “We want them to maintain as much of their natural instincts as possible through the rehab process. We limit human interaction from the staff and volunteers. So the only time we’re handling them is for required medical treatment or procedure, and we don’t try to build a relationship with them at all.”
The sea turtle species they treat most often are loggerhead turtles, leatherback turtles, Kemp’s Ridley turtles, and green sea turtles.
Some of these turtles have already had bad experiences with humans.
“We call it human interaction. So whether that be a boat strike injury or something involving marine debris, we want to be able to help mitigate some of those human incidents and get them back out there.” says Jennifer.
Other turtles end up here due to a condition called “cold stunning”, a form of slow hypothermia that occurs if the cold-blooded reptiles don’t migrate south and away from winter water temperatures quickly enough.
“The magic number is 55 degrees, where their bodies will become stunned,” says Senior Rehabilitation Biologist Margot Madden. “This takes weeks to sometimes months for these animals to get into such a hypothermic state where they are washed ashore.”
Quite aside from hypothermia, cold stunning can cause chronic illnesses and complications such as pneumonia, lesions, and parasites.
Each turtle requires a lot of high-tech electronic record-keeping. Sometimes, though, it’s best to keep it simple.
“In order to be able to identify the individual turtles from each other, we use a nontoxic paint to paint the number on their shell,” says Jennifer.
“Almost like a little race car,” she adds with a laugh.
The rehabbers are in their own race – against extinction.
“All sea turtle species are considered either threatened or endangered,” says Jennifer. “So our rehabilitation efforts here, along with all of our other sea turtle rehab partners, are really instrumental from a species recovery standpoint and research standpoint.”
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