front flipper are worldwide known to be able to survive and are doing quite
well. Personally, I would like to do a little more research to find out how are
the turtles doing later on after a head injury.
I understand you would have to get a lot of financial support from
people. And how long does it usually take for a patient to recover?
You can understand it is strongly correlated with the kind of injury they have.
I would say an average is 6-8 months, but this is mainly for the cases of
hypothermia, pneumonia or lung infection, ingestions of hook or fishing line.
Those turtles seem to recover much faster than the turtles with a head injury.
As I mentioned before, those turtles might even require a year or two if the
head injury is really severe, because they may need more time to adjust their
diving- it can be affected by the head injury; their ability to eat as well. It is a
long way for them. However, with proper treatment, medications and 24/
care, they can overcome the trouble, they just need more time. After all, I
would say it's from 6 to 8 months.
What kind of operations do you usually perform?
We have an external collaborator, that is a vet - she is able to perform the
surgeries. Like I said, unfortunately, the majority of turtles are suffering from
head-injury. There aren’t so many cases when we actually have to operate
(compared to other rescue centers, from what I've heard worldwide). But
there are some cases where we have to do an amputation- it is usually one of
the front flippers we have to amputate, when the turtle is entangled in fishing
nets or fishing lines and the bone is broken. In that case we have to perform
an amputation. We also perform surgeries in case of hook ingestion, that is in
the area of esophagus and we can quite easily remove it with a surgery.
OK, could you think of one special patient, the most extraordinary case?
Or maybe, they are all similar?
Oh, no, I would not say they are similar at all. My focus is mainly animal
behavior and welfare, so I have done a lot of research on that department
with other species, but there is a long way to go with sea turtles specifically.
Every single turtle that comes here has a different personality and character.
You can see it from the way they behave, their levels of stress. Some are