While we were in the Florida Keys, we signed up to take a tour of the Turtle Hospital.  It is a hospital specifically for sea turtles.  Love it!  Couldn’t miss that, now could we?!?!

The Turtle Hospital treats a variety of sea turtle ailments, including flipper amputations caused by fishing line and trap rope entanglements, shell damage caused by boat collisions, and intestinal impactations caused by ingestion of foreign materials such as plastic bags, balloons, and fishing line and/or hooks.

This turtle is missing a flipper and has shell damage.

Here’s one missing a front flipper.

The most common surgery is the removal of debilitating viral tumors that affect over 50% of the sea turtles in the Keys and around the world.

When we were there, the hospital had 29 turtle patients.  The tanks below are some of the turtle hospital “beds”.

Once the turtles are treated and are healed, they are moved into a larger group tank until they are able to be released.

Turtles treated for FP viral tumors are kept at the center for a year to make sure that the tumors don’t grow back.  Once they pass the year mark with no recurrence, they are allowed to return to the ocean.

Some of the other turtles aren’t quite so lucky. They are at the center because they have been hit by boat

propellers and were badly hurt.

The blow of the propeller knocks the air out of their lungs and into their body cavities which results in the turtle permanently floating.  They can’t eat if they can’t dive anymore.

There is no way to remove the air from the body cavity and so the turtles must live the rest of their lives at the Turtle Hospital.  They have, however, come up with an idea that enables the turtles to “almost” feel normal again.  They epoxy dive weights to their shells.  This way the turtles can dive again.  See the weights glued to the turtles’ shells?

The only problem is though that the epoxy doesn’t last long and so has to be reapplied ever so often.  Because of this, the fix isn’t permanent enough to free the turtles so they must stay there. 

One interesting fact we learned was the reason that Green Turtles are called Green Turtles when they are really brown turtles.The reason is that they eat so much sea weed that their fat actually turns green so they have green insides!

You can read all about each turtle’s story here and also learn more about the hospital.

If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend visiting the Turtle Hospital!

Also see our other Florida pages

Key West

Hawk’s Cay

Gatorland

Epcot