Connie Merigo, the Aquarium’s Stranding Program manager, and Dr. Charlie Innis, VMD, Director of Animal Health, will team up to talk about their life-saving work with sea turtles for the Aquarium’s rescue and rehabilitation program. They will share stories and photos from their far-reaching field work, aiding stranded and injured turtles, as well as give details about how they work inside the Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital to help treat those in need.
The Aquarium’s Rescue and Animal Health staff treats a wide range of sea turtle patients. Coming to the aid of stranded sea turtles suffering from traumatic boat strikes, entanglement injuries, and severe hypothermia, they perform life-saving medical procedures and nurse
animals back to health. They have been doing so since 1968. Between 25 to 150 sea turtles, mostly Kemp’s ridley turtles, the world’s most critically endangered sea turtles, are rescued from Cape Cod Bay each autumn. Every winter, cold stunned turtles need extensive care in the Aquarium hospital before returning to the sea. Often their ailments include hypothermia, severe dehydration, pneumonia, broken bones, shell fractures, and other ailments. Care can take a few months to over a year and can be quite sophisticated. The Aquarium has the ability to do advanced medical diagnostics such as ultrasounds, CAT scans, MRI scans, blood analysis, and radiographs (x-rays), just to name a few. In the last 20 years, hundreds of green, loggerhead, and Kemp’s ridley turtles have been treated at the Aquarium and released. The work is significant because so many of the turtles are endangered and their survival adds to the overall progress of the species.
