How Does a Sick Sea Turtle Get to the Hospital?

Rescuing a sick, injured, or stranded sea turtle is harder than you might think. It takes three STPS volunteer teams to complete a rescue.

1. First is our volunteer hotline monitor who receives the voicemail left on our emergency hotline. The caller could be a member of the public or Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) directing us to an emergency within Brevard County. After getting the incident details, the monitor activates the STPS Emergency Response effort by sending a cell phone notification to our Stranding & Salvage team.
   
2. The STPS Stranding & Salvage team is on call seven days a week, 365 days a year for sea turtle emergencies in Brevard County. When they receive the hotline monitor’s rescue notification, a Stranding & Salvage team member goes to the scene and evaluates the sick sea turtle. After reporting their findings to the FWC, they may be directed to have the injured animal transported to a specific rehabilitation facility. That’s when an STPS Transport team member comes to safely move the sea turtle to a facility for care.
   
3. Did you know that our Transport program is the first of its kind in Florida? Back in 2017, the FWC issued a Transport permit to STPS to provide training to our volunteers for transporting sea turtles to and from rehabilitation facilities throughout the state. Our Transport volunteers not only take a three-hour Stranding & Salvage course, but also complete 90-minute course on how to properly handle a sea turtle during transport.

Two STPS volunteers with lots of experience doing strandings and transports are husband and wife Jerry Lemon and Linda Rutland. Linda is a member of the STPS Stranding & Salvage team and Jerry is a transporter. They’ve transported turtles to rehab facilities all over Florida. In one instance, a rehabbed turtle needed to be “dive tested” before it could be released, so they transported it to Tampa’s The Florida Aquarium, which has a deep-dive foraging pool. Another time, Linda took sea turtle blood from Brevard Zoo’s Sea Turtle Healing Center for a turtle in West Palm Beach that needed a transfusion.

What To Do If You Find a Sick, Injured, or Dead Sea Turtle:

• In Brevard County, call the STPS hotline at (321) 206-0646. Leave a message for a sea turtle emergency. Be sure to provide the location (street address if possible), condition of the turtle, and your name. We will call you back on the phone number that you placed the call from.
  
• Everywhere else in Florida, please call FWC at 888-404-3922.

Please Remember:

If you find a sea turtle in distress:

• Do not touch the sea turtle.
• In Brevard, contact the STPS hotline. Elsewhere, contact FWC.
• Wait for instructions.
• Do not return it to the ocean. Most likely, it’s too weak to survive in the water and may drown.
• Do not attempt to rescue the injured sea turtle as this could result in further injury to the animal or yourself.

If you find an injured or lost hatchling:

• Do not touch the hatchling.
• In Brevard, contact the STPS hotline. Elsewhere, contact FWC.
• Wait for instructions.
• Do not remove it from the beach unless instructed to do so.
• Do not put it in water or air conditioning.