Emerald

Wow – where do the days go?! Sorry about the delay in getting to this! Here is Emerald. The first info that we got on this turtle (see previous post) was wrong. Not an adult and not male. This is a very large sub-adult, female, green turtle. A mouthful to say and a handful to wrangle. She is fat and healthy and not really happy at all about her visit here.

She came in with numerous scrapes on her head and carapace, not unlike Kali – just a bit smaller at 200 pounds instead of the whopping 315 of Kali. The wounds were not severe and although some were very near her left eye, there was no injury to the eye itself. Our concern with head injuries is that there could be internal damage that we are unable to assess. We had a male green die of internal bleeding in the brain last summer. So, we kept Emerald here for 72 hours of observation in hopes that no further internal damage had occurred.

Given that the wounds will heal just fine on their own and she does not appear to be suffering from further injury we released her last night. She took off like a rocket once she hit the water and we never even saw her come up for a breath!

The white patches are scrapes down to the bone.

She didn’t take kindly to being man-handled!

Back where she belongs.