Green (Chelonia mydas)

Stranding Location: North Myrtle Beach, SC
Arrival Date: 4/3/25
Age: Juvenile
Sex: Unknown
Weight: 2.43 kg (5.35 lbs)

Case History

This crusty little juvenile green sea turtle stranded in the surf in North Myrtle Beach, and South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) staff and permitted volunteers jumped into action. This sea turtle was transported safely to the South Carolina Aquarium to receive treatment!

Treatment

Daisy arrived at the Aquarium with a plethora of problems. Initially, we were able to identify that this patient had been sick for quite some time due to her/his heavy load of epibiota. Normally, we can see a few types of epibiota on our patients, but in Daisy’s case we saw barnacles, sand, algae, gooseneck barnacles and even a parasitic worm! After cleaning most of the epibiota off Daisy, we noted many old and healing predator attack wounds on the neck, both front flippers, carapace (top shell) and plastron (bottom shell). S/he was also slightly cold stunned. So, overall, Daisy’s cause of stranding was not as straightforward as one might think, since there were predator attack injuries, severe debilitation and cold stun symptoms.

With all of these injuries and aliments, you can imagine that Daisy was in pretty rough shape. Overall, this little green is weak, lethargic, has poor blood values, an eye ulcer and a lot of healing wounds. When a sea turtle like Daisy is in this type of state, we often place them in shallow water in a floating kiddie pool. This allows these aquatic species to be comfortable in filtered water, while not having to expend a lot of energy to take breaths. Thankfully, Daisy was able to tolerate shallow water in the kiddie pool, so we felt comfortable leaving her/him in water overnight.

Updates

April 9, 2025: Daisy has made some great strides over these past several days. Initially, we kept Daisy in the kiddie pool to allow her/him to rest and regain some strength. After a couple of days, we started offering food items. During this time, we discovered Daisy has a preference for mackerel! We’ve also started Daisy on daily nebulization treatments to help heal a fungal infection, which s/he is tolerating well. After a couple days of some much-needed rest, we tested Daisy in a full tank of water to see how this little green would do. Daisy excelled at it, and was swimming calmly and levelly throughout the entire tank. S/he even ate food off the bottom of the tank!