It is a small place with tanks everywhere and tons of staff around willing to answer any questions - probably the same questions over and over.
The most famous resident of Sea Turtle Inc is Allison, a green sea turtle. She has only 1 flipper after being attacked by a shark as a young turtle and she now wears a prosthesis. If she didn't wear one she would drown because she couldn't get to the surface to get air. Sea turtles have to breath air - they don't have gills. Allison also has a babysitter/lifeguard staff person that keeps an eye on her while she is in her exercise tank with her prosthesis on. There is always the possibility that her prosthesis could fall off and she could drown. Her current prosthesis is her 5th one. We bought the book that one of the staff members wrote about Allison. It is titled, Allison: the mostly true story of a one flippered sea turtle.
We also met Fred, the loggerhead turtle with 3 flippers, Boudreaux the green sea turtle with 2 flippers, Merry Christmas with 3 flippers. The hospital works to release as many turtles as possible back to the wild but if a turtle has less than 75% of his flippers than they can't be released because they can't swim fast enough. Some of the turtles will be sent to zoos or aquariums while some will stay at the hospital. The turtles can lose their flippers from almost being eaten by predators or more often by trash or fishing line. Water pollution is a huge problem for turtles - they eat a lot of trash because they think it looks like their food source. Hawkbills eat sponges, leatherbacks eat jellyfish, loggerheads eat crunchy food like crabs and green sea turtles eat seagrass. Since a turtles brain is not very large they don't learn that the plastic trash bag floating upside down is not a jellyfish or that piece of balloon floating in the water is not a sponge. Why are Sea turtles important? Sea Turtle Inc, says it best A common question we are asked at Sea Turtle, Inc. is “why are sea turtles important?” This is a question with many answers. Sea turtles are important to ocean ecosystems. They maintain marine habitats, help cycle nutrients, and are part of a balanced food web. As they decline, it affects the health of the world’s ocean. It is up to us, as human beings, to be stewards of the environment and work towards conserving our oceans and stabilizing sea turtle populations.
After dinner we rode our bikes to another dessert place but ended up at Dolce Roma again because the other restaurant was closed for 2 weeks after the summer rush. Everyone enjoyed the nice bike ride though. After dessert, we headed back for bed and everyone fell asleep quickly.
