Topsail Beach, NC - The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center 

Sea Turtle Hospital News

…I got all my sisters (and brothers) with me. That’s the song being sung by seven little greens that are sharing two of our hospital tanks. And after being confined to small, square plastic tubs for several months they couldn’t be happier.   

Because sea turtles do not live communally in the wild you never know what to expect when you ask them to share their space. First you have to decide who goes where, based on size and personality. Next you line them up for their mug shots: pictures of their unique markings that enable the volunteers to tell them apart. Then you add the turtles, one at a time. After watching the first one splash and zoom around the tank like a little rocket you introduce a second turtle. Now you have two rockets, loaded with fuel (breakfast.) You pray they don’t collide.

Turtle mom (Jean) is hovering with a warning: "if you bite you’re out." There’s some testing (and tasting) of carapace but it seems to be more out of curiosity and a sea turtle’s non-discriminate eating habits than aggression. So far so good, and a third turtle goes in. More zooming around: over, under, up and down like turtle bumper cars. In addition to racing around the tank they engage in a lot of reciprocal back scratching. Finally they wear themselves out and settle to the bottom in a group hug. Soon they’re asleep in each other’s flippers, dreaming happy turtle dreams. 

You don’t mess with success so we repeated the process, this time loading a larger tank with four little greens. It’s not clear if there’s a leader of the pack in each tank, but at least there doesn’t seem to be a bully, which has been a problem in the past. Our biggest challenge is to make sure everybody is eating well, and that they each get their vitamin and calcium on schedule. Luckily they are so friendly and cooperative that they literally "line up" to get their supplements before we plunk their meal in the tank. And once a week they come out for a bath and weigh-in to track their progress.

We can all learn a lesson from the way these critters have adapted and learned to get along.

Questions, comments or suggestions for stories
Contact me at: flippers@embarqmail.com.  This column will appear approximately every two weeks during the winter months.