Florida Keys, November

We visited the Turtle Hospital in Marathon, the Florida Keys. The hospital was a hotel with a saltwater pool. One day someone put a sick turtle in the pool where it could recover. From then on it was a hotel/turtle hospital. A while ago a hurricane flooded the place. The hotel was too damaged to recover. Now it's just a turtle hospital.

The turtles here have several problems. One is a herpes virus that causes wart-like growths on their skin. They can remove the outside growths and release them after a year of not developing anymore growths but if the tumours are on their organs they euthanize them. Apparently it's very hard to operate on a turtle's insides, the shell gets in the way.

Others have something called bubble butt, I know there's a technical name for it but that's the name they gave to their first case and it's easier to remember. They get an air bubble from being hit on the shell by a boat, then over time the air bubble causes the shell to deform and they are unbalanced, sometimes unable to get under water to feed, sometimes having trouble getting their heads up to breath. At the hospital they fiberglass weights onto their shells, helping them balance out. The deformity just gets worse so they keep them for life. A few others are missing a limb, they release them after awhile if they're doing well.

Most were green turtles, some were hawksbills, and one was a Kemp's Ridley, very rare. They had 2 hatchlings, so cute. One just wanted to bite everyone, he'll be released when big enough. The other was an albino (seen above) and they've decided to keep it because no one's ever seen one before. They're afraid it will be easily eaten, or collected.

One of our favourites was Joey, a 3 year old who could only swim in left circles. They found him at the bottom of a nest. He was very active and cute. They also have the perfect match for Joey, Lacey. She's one and can only swim to the right. She flips over when she's too excited.

In the large pool we got to feed the 15 or so turtles some dog kibble. Most of them were bubble butts. Water squirted out of their noses when they ate.