Visiting the turtles

Text: Juliana Klein; photos: Sebastian Kanzler

Last weekend we went to Algeciras to visit a rescue centre for injured marine animals (“Centro de Gestión del Medio Marino Andalúz”). In this centre injured sea turtles that strand or are found in the ocean are recovered by the veterinarian Carolina Fernández Maldonado and her team and afterwards released into the wild again.

  

It’s surprising how many “clients” the centre had this year. They treated around 100 sea turtles within 3 months. This is due to a massive cirripedian infection which has spread enormously this year. Specimens of barnacles attach to the turtle’s fin and neck skin, as well as to carapax and plastron, “travelling” with and therefore being able to feed by filtration. But they can also damage the tissues of the sea turtle, furthermore weakening the animals which can lead to bacterial and fungal infections.

  

The sea turtle we are talking about is the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta), one of only seven sea turtle species worldwide. It is distributed in nearly all temperate and subtropical oceans. They were intensively hunted by poachers, and their nesting beaches are being destroyed and every year many fall victims to trawl nets and from the consumption of plastic. All these for today common threats have caused the loggerhead sea turtle to be listed as an endangered species by the IUCN. The loggerhead sea turtle has a massive head and a very strong beak with which it easily crushes crustaceans and sea urchins. But they also feed on jellyfish, cuttlefish and sea grass.

  

During nesting season the females crawl up the beaches at night to lay up to four nests in one season, with 70 – 120 eggs respectively. After about 55 days hatchlings leave the nest and crawl quickly towards the ocean, because at the beach predators are already waiting. Only one of 1000 hatchlings reaches sexual maturity at the ripe old age of 20 to 30 years!

One sea turtle that was brought to the centre was trapped in a piece of old fishing net. The X-ray showed a serious injury on her flipper, and as a result they had to amputate it. Today this sea turtle is swimming around in her small pool quite lively and can be released to the ocean soon. If it will ever be able to reproduce is doubtful but at least one individual was able to be saved with this operation.

  

At the moment they are working on building a big pool where sea turtles which have had to stay a long time in the centre can build up muscles before being released. But the centre also plans to take care of larger marine animals like dolphins in need of rescue and treatment in the future.

In this centre they do not only take care of injured animals. There is another interesting project: sea turtle eggs from the Cape Verde archipelago which are incubated on beaches of the nature park “Cabo de Gata” in Almería. As soon as the baby sea turtles hatch, they are brought to the centre and raised for about nine months to increase their chance of surviving. The next summer when they are in good healthy condition, they are released at the same beaches with the hope that they as adults will one day return to these beaches to lay their eggs. That’s because the loggerhead sea turtle shows a high degree of philopatry, what means that the female adults return to their place of birth to nest. Until now about 920 sea turtles have been released to the Mediterranean Sea – whether or not this method will be crowned with success remains to be seen in the coming years.

 

Two of our protégés who were pulled out of the water by the crew of firmm during two tours in May and July have been brought to Carolina and her team in Algeciras. The first turtle unfortunately died after a short time of a very serious injury to the jaw. The other sea turtle, given the name “Dolores” by us, is meanwhile swimming happily again in the ocean.