30-06-2025
Sea turtle hospital needed in Ireland
Sea turtle hospital needed in Ireland to cater for unprecedented numbers of young loggerheads arriving here due to marine heatwaves
A leading marine biologist is aiming to establish a North Atlantic Sea Turtle hospital in Ireland after another disorientated loggerhead turtle washed up in Kerry in recent days.
Five cold-stunned tropical sea turtles have landed this year alone - an unprecedented surge blamed on marine heatwaves and climate change, which have seen the arrival of long-living loggerheads, but also a rare green sea turtle.
The latest arrival, a young loggerhead, has been named Kseniia after a young girl who found the shivering reptile on Inch beach while walking with her family.
Kevin Flannery, Director of Dingle Oceanworld, who recently organised the release of an endangered green turtle in the Canaries after months of rehabilitation, said there is a need to set up a dedicated hospital for the shelled patients.
'The increase in numbers in the last three or four years has been quite dramatic. Five have arrived this year, and three have survived. Before that, it was once every few years. We've sent a request to the National Parks and Wildlife Service to set up a turtle hospital nationally because of the marine heatwaves, which are bringing increased numbers.
'We could set up a permanent turtle hospital with specialised tanks with warm water and the right veterinary expertise. There's currently no sea turtle hospital this side of the Atlantic - there's one in Florida and one in the Canaries.
'We need to have a coordinated effort to preserve them. If they're coming into our waters, the state should give some funding to transport them back down to the Canaries so they can be released into the wild. We can't be relying on charity to get them back.'
The latest loggerhead, which is an endangered species, is thought to be around eight years old – they have an expected lifespan of up to 80 years old in the wild.
'It was cold-shocked, but it recovered very quickly because the temperature was warm when it arrived. Solstice, the turtle we rescued at Christmas, was much sicker because the temperatures were much colder.
'This new turtle is being fed, and quite happy and in very good condition. A family living down in Inch found it on Wednesday.'
In the past, their arrival was a freak occurrence with tropical turtles deposited on the Irish coast due to Atlantic storms or a debilitating injury.
'It's the size of the juveniles coming here. Prio to that, we got injured turtles who had either a limb missing or were unable to swim, or had serious problems with their shells. Now we're getting specific juveniles, which obviously have gone astray because we've had these dramatic marine heatwaves.
'We had another one this year in the Atlantic, and a big one in 2023. They are reptiles and they require internal temperatures of over 20 degrees."
He believes the turtles get disoriented when they find the temperatures are unexpectedly warm as they go towards the North Atlantic due to marine heatwaves.
"They may assume that they're heading in the right direction. Then all of a sudden they get a cold shock, the temperature drops dramatically, and they get washed ashore - and a lot of them die.'
Often suffering from hypothermia and pneumonia, the ailing turtles have been nursed back to health by Flannery over the past three decades, beginning in the family bath before the establishment of the Kerry aquarium.
He said Dingle Oceanworld has developed the expertise in the delicate task of slowly raising the temperature of the cold-shocked creatures and nursing them back to full health before flying them down to the African coast so they can be released back to the wild.
'We now know how to deal with them. We now know how to resuscitate them, and we now know how to get them back so that they can be put back into the wild in their own country. Also, we want to PIT-tag them and possibly satellite-tag them.'
Flannery says a hospital in Ireland, which would include a quarantine area and use veterinarians with sea turtle expertise, could cater for turtles stranded all across the North Atlantic.
'A hospital would entail the veterinary people with the expertise in increasing their temperature, the paraphernalia of drugs that are required to bring it back to life, and maintain the turtle, such as the antibiotics, and all this would have to be approved by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
'We would need some form of funding and specialised heating systems.'
Meanwhile, a professor from a university in Florida flew in early this week to take DNA from Kseniia, along with frozen samples from other stranded turtles, to finally help solve the mystery of where they are all coming from.
'We have started the DNA process with the University of Florida. He had taken a sample from this turtle, Kseniia, and I had frozen samples from the other turtles who have been released to the wild. It will be very interesting to see where they are coming from, whether it's the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean or the African coast.'
An unprecedented number of these turtles have also washed up along the North Sea in the last year or two, but they haven't survived. In addition, the UK has faced red tape issues in transporting rescued turtles back through the EU since Brexit.
'We could assist other countries that need to rehabilitate these turtles, and we have established a protocol of working with the Spanish government and the hospital in Gran Canaria to release them back into the wild.'
