A bad experience

Last night I encountered �Sara� a leatherback that we first encountered during the 2003 season. She had just finished digging an egg chamber and was getting ready to drop her eggs. I snuck up behind her and noticed that her cloaca (the cavity that the intestinal and reproductive tracts empty into) was very large and inflamed. We had several leatherbacks on the beach at this time, so I left her and headed north to find some more turtles. Nothing else. I headed back down to watch Sara finish her nest and was concerned that she still had not laid any eggs, though she seemed to be trying very hard. I made a few unsuccessful phone calls to our veterinary folks to see if there was anything I could do for her. After about 15 minutes of watching her struggle, I put on some gloves and took a look to see if there was anything I could see. I did not see anything external, so I went a little further and reached in and pulled out a football sized mass of plastic from her cloaca! She was plugged up by plastic debris she had ingested. I took out at least two masses of plastic and she seemed to be doing better. Her cloaca decreased in size by 2/3 and was not as sensitive as it was earlier. She covered her empty nest and crawled back into the water. We took a few images and collected the plastic. After chatting with our veterinarian Nancy Mettee and Jeanette Wyneken this morning we think that Sara has a good chance of passing the rest of the plastic and will likely return to nest.


Leatherbacks and all marine life face the threat of eating plastics everyday out in the ocean. Please try to reduce the quantity of plastics out in the environment. Get out there on the beach, or on your boat and try to clean up and make a difference to these turtles!


All marine turtle images taken in Florida were obtained with the approval of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife (USFWS) and the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commision (FWC) under conditions not harmful to this or other turtles


More information about leatherback and plastic can be found here: http://www.floridaleatherbacks.com/research/threats2.asp

A recent post by Mathew Godfrey on seaturtle.org: http://www.seaturtle.org/blog/mgodfrey/000384.html


General info. about plastics in the marine environment:
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm


http://www.blueoceansociety.org/plastics.htm