On August 8, the Coast Guard team stationed in Marathon, Florida responded to an urgent call: A female loggerhead sea turtle was struggling to swim in nearby waters.
When they came upon the sea turtle, the issue became clear — one of her front flippers was hopelessly ensnared by a fishing line. Working together, the men safely hauled the massive turtle aboard their ship and rushed her to The Turtle Hospital.
In 1986, The Turtle Hospital became the world’s first veterinary hospital dedicated solely to the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of injured sea turtles. Since its founding, it has successfully treated over 3,000 sea turtles.
“We have our newest patient just pulled in in the turtle hospital ambulance,” Bette Zirkelbach, The Turtle Hospital’s general manager, said in a recent TikTok.
The guardsmen who rescued the sea turtle had named her Roxanne. After they dropped her off, many of them stayed behind to help with her intake exam.
“The Coast Guard is an incredible partner for the Turtle Hospital,” Zirkelbach said. “It takes a village to get these turtles rescued. And Roxanne is a big girl.”
221 pounds, in fact.
Zirkelbach went on to explain that sea turtle entanglements were on the rise, now that commercial lobster season in the Florida Keys was in full swing.
“She is entangled in a trap line, and fortunately, it doesn’t look nearly as bad as Hope’s entanglement, so we are cautiously optimistic that that flipper can be saved,” the manager said, referring to another sea turtle that the Coast Guard had rescued in early June.
Hope, a 150-pound loggerhead, had been wrapped in an anchor line. Her right flipper had been injured so badly that it called for a life-saving amputation. Two months later, Hope is thriving in rehabilitation, with the potential for ocean release.
Fortunately for Roxanne, her flipper looked salvageable upon first glance, although it was swollen.
“We won’t know until we work with her, but every effort will be made,” Zirkelbach said.
Several of the guardsmen followed them into the backrooms to help hold Roxanne down for her X-rays.
“You can see the challenge with these lateral X-rays with a big, strong turtle,” Zirkelbach explained.
As they conducted the X-rays to inspect her flipper, the technician pointed out that Roxanne was pregnant.
“Take a look,” she said. “100 eggs.”
“Really?” a Coast Guardsman gaped.
“There can be 200 in each nest, about 120 — although this year it seems like they’ve been a lot bigger,” the X-ray technician explained.
On August 9, The Turtle Hospital gave another update: Roxanne was heading back to the ocean.
“Our medical team determined she was healthy enough to return to the ocean,” The Turtle Hospital wrote in the caption for a recent video. “She was tagged and released back into the wild, where hopefully she’ll continue on her journey toward nesting season.”
The same guardsmen who had helped with her initial rescue came back to carry her from van to beach.
“Another entanglement rescue with a happy ending — and another reminder of how important it is to properly secure fishing gear and keep our ocean friends safe.”
Watch Roxanne’s release video below:
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Featured Image: Screenshot via @turtlehospital/TikTok
