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
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
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.