| Trapped
baby loggerheads rescued
Twenty-seven turtles
recover at Key West museum
BY MANDY BOLEN
Citizen Staff Writer
|
Photo by ROB O'NEAL/The Citizen
Katie Lyons of Big Pine Key helped rescue 27 disoriented loggerhead
turtles off the Marquesas on Tuesday. The days-old hatchlings are
being cared for at the Turtle Kraals Turtle Museum at the Key West
Bight. |
KEY WEST — The
nest that successfully protected loggerhead turtle eggs from predators
before they hatched nearly killed them this week when roots and weeds at
the bottom of the nest trapped the tiny hatchlings and prevented their
instinctual foray into the marine world.
Biologist Tom
Wilmers of the National Key Deer Refuge kept a regular watch over the
turtle nest at the Marquesas, and discovered the problem Tuesday when he
also discovered unhatched eggs and some hatched turtles that had already
died.
"These 27 are
lucky," said Tina Brown, who runs the Turtle Kraals Museum and education
center at Key West Bight, where the turtles stayed Tuesday night. They
will remain at the museum until they are old enough to be released.
"Everybody survived the night," Brown said Wednesday.
Brown
estimated that the turtles had hatched about two days before Wilmers
found them. She planned to begin feeding them once they each shed a
protective membrane that keeps them nourished for the first few days of
their life.
"We'll release
them into a weed line in a few weeks," she said.
Baby
loggerheads live their early lives in drifting lines of sargassum, or
seaweed, before establishing a home in shallower coastal waters, where
they can forage for invertebrates on the bottom of the ocean.
Richie Moretti,
owner of The Turtle Hospital in Marathon, blames the lack of rain this
season for the collapsed turtle nest that threatened the threatened
species.
"That's the
second collapsed nest I've heard about this season," Moretti said. "I
don't think we've had enough rain, so the nest gets too dry and falls
into itself."
Turtle
Hospital volunteers saved several hatchlings from a collapsed nest in
Islamorada a few weeks ago and recently released them "about halfway to
Cuba," Moretti said.
Loggerhead
turtles have been listed as a threatened species since 1978, according
to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
mbolen@keysnews.com
|
