The moment a loggerhead sea turtle is released back into the wild after being treated at Sea Life Scarborough

Yorkshire Post

Todd German from SeaLife Scarborough and Scott Blacker from SeaLife Blackpool releasing Nazare a loggerhead sea turtle into the sea off the coast of Horta in the Azores

Transcript

00:00...

00:04...

00:06so graceful

00:08...

00:10slight flippage, spinning around

00:12a little bit

00:14...

00:16...

00:18...

00:20...

00:22...

00:24...

00:26...

00:28I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

00:32We can't see it.

00:34I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

00:35We can't see it.

00:36I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

00:37We can't see it.

00:38I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

00:39We can't see it.

00:40I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

00:41We can't see it.

00:42I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

00:43We can't see it.

00:44I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

00:45We can't see it.

00:46I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

01:07I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

01:36I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

02:05I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

02:34I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

03:02I don't know if you can see it, but the whole section of the building is hanging.

03:14So we got a phone call from British Divers Marine Life Rescuers, and there'd been reports

03:19of a loggerhead turtle stranding on Barrow-in-Furness Beach.

03:23They'd managed to pick up the turtle and had said they're going to bring it down to our

03:27facility at Blackpool Sea Life, where we could assess her and see what's going on, because

03:31at that point they weren't sure if she was in any condition or if she was alive, basically.

03:36Okay, so once the little van had turned up with the turtle in the back, we could see

03:42she was very much a cold-stunned turtle.

03:44Her core temperature was 13 degrees, and she should be well into the 20s.

03:50So she was motionless.

03:52She was just about making some movements with her eyes, and she was completely covered all

03:56over a shell in algaes and seaweeds, like she'd been floating around in the sea for some time.

04:01So we got her in and started doing some more assessments and seeing what we can find out

04:05about her, and that's when we noticed she had a satellite tag.

04:08So we realised she must have been rescued earlier in her life, basically, because it

04:13was a pretty solid, big tag.

04:15But that gave us a window to ask around all different aquariums and zoos around Europe

04:21and find out exactly where she was from, which was amazing, because within 24 hours

04:26we had the old health records.

04:28We found out that she was released from the coast of France, from La Roche Aquarium, where

04:35she'd been rehabilitated in June in 2023.

04:38So it wasn't the first time she'd been in a facility like ours.

04:42Okay, so once we'd got some of the information back from La Roche, we could actually see

04:47amazingly on the website, the satellite tag showed her going from France.

04:51She then turned away towards Ireland, unfortunately, and that got close to December.

04:56And the tag stopped beeping around December time, just off the coast of Ireland.

05:00And that means she probably got stuck in the storms then and disappeared, and that's where

05:04it sort of dragged around and up to us, well, into Barrow-in-Furness by February time.

05:09So she'd had a bit of a rough couple of months, we reckon, from the condition of her.

05:13Okay, so when Nazaré first arrived at the centre and we'd finished assessing her, we got her

05:18into an enclosure where we could start to control raising her temperature, because the most

05:23important thing was to not brush this.

05:25Although she was very cold, turtle, and very sick, she could only go up by the maximum

05:30of a degree a day in her core temperature, or else it could have caused her even more issues.

05:34So the first thing we did was set her up in this, start to clean her off, start to look

05:39at how to rehydrate her.

05:40And we got local vets in, we got vets from International Voot Zoo Veterinary Group to

05:44do x-rays, so we could check her whole body out.

05:47And that's when we found out that she did have pneumonia, so we started the treatment

05:51for pneumonia as well.

05:52But this involved daily injections, turning her on her side, and she was a 35 kilo turtle,

05:58so it was quite difficult to manoeuvre her.

06:00We were pumping in solutions into her to start rehydrating her, and it took all the team

06:05sort of around the clock to be doing this.

06:08We had little cameras set up so we could watch her to make sure, once we started adding water,

06:13that she wasn't going to drown, because she was very weak.

06:15So we had to be checking her every hour, checking her core temperature, and it was a good solid

06:20two, three weeks of round-the-clock care, really, until she really started to come back

06:25to life, which was amazing to see.

06:27Okay, so once we saw that Nazare was starting to stabilise, and it was really promising

06:32signs, her temperature was coming up, she was taking on food, we could look to then

06:37the next stage of her life, really, and that was contacting Todd and his team over in Scarborough

06:42Sea Life, because we knew that they've done this before, they're very capable at rehabilitating

06:47animals, and they had a perfect quarantine tank to take her to her next stage, and then

06:53we also knew she could live in their ocean tank for a little bit, where she could really

06:56start to move and strengthen up, and look to release her back into the wild, hopefully.

07:02So the release went to plan, which is amazing, we managed to get Nazare to the perfect spot

07:07and get her into the water, she didn't mess about, as soon as we put her in, she just

07:12spun around, darted off, and the speed on her was absolutely incredible, so good to

07:17see this animal that was found on Barrow Beach, just down the road from us, covered in sand

07:22and looking pretty messy, to see her then so strong that she can power off into this

07:28lovely blue ocean was a pretty cool experience really, it's really good to know that she's

07:33happy and well now.

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