Assorted wildlife and law agencies pooled resources Tuesday to release 42 de-oiled Kemp's ridley sea turtles that were victims of the recent northern Gulf of Mexico spill. The turtles were gently placed into the Gulf waters about five miles from Goodland by members of agencies, including the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Audubon Nature Institute, Mote Marine Laboratory, SeaWorld in Orlando, Walt Disney World and Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
Veterinarian Dr. Kara Field had the whole mission close to her heart. Having traveled down from New Orleans after assisting with de-oiling for the past couple of months, she said most of the turtles were found off the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
“The first oiled turtle that was picked up from the spill came into Louisiana on May 18,” she said. “Since then, we’ve probably received about 100 turtles before most of the other places starting receiving them, so we got a lot of the really densely oiled animals.”
She said the oil completely covered their eyes and mouths, and was actually on their corneas, compromising their vision.
Field said it wasn’t a case of disoriented turtles washing up conveniently for de-oiling.
“We waited for a while … we thought we’d start seeing turtles coming in, but they didn’t, so NOAA and Fish & Wildlife made a decision to go out and actively look for them,” Field said.
According to NOAA, the turtles are the smallest in the world, weighing on average around 100 pounds. The turtles released Tuesday were about two years old and weighed 10 pounds.
“We were pretty shocked at how oiled they were,” Field said, “We had to used gauze to swab out their mouths. But we only lost three out of 194 animals.
The release area was chosen because it’s known that turtles favor the area, Field said.
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