6/26/12
NEWPORT -- Nadine Fuller brushed sand away from the beak of the turtle and saw its eye blink.
But it was so still, so lifeless, she figured it had to be dead. "I thought ... maybe that was just a reflex," she said.
Fuller took some photos, then went back up to Moolack Shores Motel where she was a guest, to report her find.
Motel manager Frank Brooks called the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Then someone saw the turtle lift its head, someone else thought they saw it move a flipper, and so the race was on to save the 135-pound green sea turtle.
Now more than a week later, caregivers at the Oregon Coast Aquarium are cautiously optimistic that this turtle far from its native warm waters may make a full recovery.
"He's doing pretty well," said Jim Burke, director of animal husbandry at the aquarium. "We still need to get him stabilized. But he's behaving OK. He's right on track as far as the rehabilitation plan is concerned."
When Jim Rice, coordinator of the stranding network, got the call, he knew there was a good chance the turtle wasn't dead, but rather "cold stunned," or hypothermic. While this is the first live sea turtle he's rescued off the Oregon coast in the seven years he's been here, he's seen plenty during his time at the New England Aquarium in Boston, where the staff rehabilitated sea turtles that washed up on Cape Cod.
"These animals will often appear dead when there is still some life left inside of them," he said.
Green sea turtles normally are found in waters 75 to 80 degrees and are the same turtles you could expect to see snorkeling in Hawaii, Rice said. This turtle was most likely from the tropical or subtropical Pacific Ocean.
No one knows why the turtle wound up in the 50-ish-degree water off Oregon's coast, but Burke speculated that it may have been in warm water that became surrounded by cold water, which mixes in and causes the previously warm water to chill. When that happens, the turtle goes into what is essentially a state of hibernation.
"They slow down, they get weak, they get dehydrated," Burke said. "They don't have the energy to retreat from these cold waters and get to the warm waters they left. They don't have the strength to reverse what time and temperatures have done. They become victims of the seas, wind, waves."
Of the dozen or so sea turtles that washed up on the Oregon coast in the past 15 years, only about half were alive, Burke said. Two sea turtles, a green and an Olive Ridley, washed up in 2010. Both were rescued and later sent to San Diego. They were released into the wild last summer.
By the time Rice got this green sea turtle to the aquarium -- about two hours after it was first discovered -- it was barely alive, with little sign of respiration, some muscle reflex and a core temperature in the 50s. Its eyes were swollen, one likely pecked at by a bird.
It's being treated with antibiotics and getting fluids via IC-- that is, through the intracoelomic or inner body cavity. It isn't eating on its own yet, but Burke is hopeful that will come soon enough.
"We are working with the permitting agencies," Burke said. "What will happen is they will identify a rehabilitation center in a warmer area. Most likely this animal will go to that area for feeding and observation. The goal would be to release it back to the wild, ideally later this summer."
And that's the news Fuller's waiting to hear.
"This is the best place in the world he could have come ashore with the aquarium people right there and the motel people knowing Jim Rice," Fuller said. "It just all fell together. When they were carrying him up the steps, he raised his head up and I knew he had a good fighting chance and I was just thrilled. It was a wonderful moment for me."
