Thursday, October 22, 2009

Meet Crater Lake - A rescued sea turtle struck by a boat propeller

Crater Lake or Crater for short was brought in yesterday afternoon off of a beach in Sandwich Mass. The Aquarium's Marine Animal Rescue Team went down and met up with James and Dennis from Wellfleet Audubon. They had already taken the turtle off the beach and were ready to get the turtle packed up in our ambulance to head back to the Aquarium.


You can see the red lines indicating where the probable propeller strike occured (Left).
After initial cleanup and stabilization (Right).

This was another Kemp's ridley that had a severe fracture to the carapace (top part of shell). It looks like it probably was made by a boat propeller. We cleaned up the shell a bit and determined that the fracture did not appear to involve any major organs. Dr Innis and Dr Cavin flushed out the areas of soft tissue under the fracture and tried to determine the best route of action.


Keeping with this year's National Parks theme, this turtle is named after Crater Lake National Park


After stabilizing the fracture, Crater was tucked in to the ICU for the night. So today we decided to put the turtle back together again!

The team getting ready for the procedures.

After cleaning the area and adding some topical anesthetic our Veterinarians started to piece together the carapace. After the carapace was in place we wanted to try and bring the coelomic cavity (the space between all the organs in the body cavity) back into contact with the shell. So we started a vacuum-assisted closure. This will create negative pressure in the crack and slowly draw the coelomic lining towards the shell.

Putting the shell back together.

Placing Glad Press and Seal and Tegaderm to help create suction.

Dr Innis starting the Vacuum pump to create negative pressure.

Crater tucked into the ICU to allow the negative pressure to work.

The turtle is very active and the blood work currently does not show any major anomalies. We are hopeful for a positive outcome!

-Adam

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posted by Adam at 11:10 AM 1 Comments



Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Update on our new patient, Acadia

We received photos today from Joseph Tatulli the person who first saw the loggerhead sea turtle that was rescued this weekend and reported it. Here is a picture of the turtle in Drummers Pond.


(Photo: Joseph Tatulli)

Also our new loggerhead was given a name today. We have decided on Acadia. Most seasons we choose a theme for naming rescued turtles, this year we have decided on National Parks. Here's a list of the parks.


Acadia National Park is located in Maine.

But enough about the naming. What's going on with our gal...


Intestines in the radiograph.

Yesterday we took radiographs and found that she has a fairly full gastrointestinal tract. She is also missing part of her rear left flipper, most likely due to some predation as a smaller turtle. We removed the majority of barnacles and cleaned her up her shell. Some folks visiting the aquarium got a good show of her receiving a fresh water bath in a small pool as we were removing the algae off of her carapace.


Removing the barnacles

Her blood work shows that she is still slightly anemic because of this we may hold her a little longer than what we had originally planned. Some of the keratin on the Carapace is also starting to slough off which, is not too surprising because of the barnacles and algae cover. We also want to make sure she is able to move the contents out of her intestinal tract and that there isn't a blockage.


Before After

We are planning on putting her into one of our sea turtle tanks in the sea turtle recovery room at some point today. We will monitor how she is swimming and hope the activity will help stimulate GI motility.

-Adam


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posted by Adam at 6:45 PM 1 Comments



Monday, October 12, 2009

The new turtle season starts BIG!

Hi everyone,

Yesterday we received a BIG surprise from the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. Our First cold-stunned sea turtle of the season has arrived. Typically the first turtles are small ridleys and green sea turtles, so this one was a real shocker.

She is an sub-adult loggerhead sea turtle. She was reported to the Wellfleet Audubon Sanctuary late Sunday evening as a juvenile leatherback that was swimming in a marsh. It was already getting dark and we hoped that the turtle would swim back out on its own. When they found it Monday morning it turned out to be this 175-lb. loggerhead.

The big girl in the back of an Audubon pickup, she took up almost half of it.

When the rescue department arrived in Wellfleet the turtle had a temperature of 54.8F because the bay temperature did not drop below 60F this indicates that the turtle had been exposed to the air temperature possibly over the past couple of nights.


Here James from the Audubon Society helps me load the turtle into a kennel and we are able to get a great plastron (lower shell) shot!

The carapace (top shell) was covered with algae and barnacles. She had low respiratory and heart rates. Her blood work showed some minor abnormalities and she was given subcutaneous fluids to help balance them.


Photo of the carapace and the algal and barnacle cover. A close up of the barnacles, yes they are still alive!

We are hoping this animal will have a short stay, but we will know more after X-rays are done and a complete blood work is returned.

-Adam

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posted by Adam at 8:47 PM 1 Comments