Topless bar has new life as turtle hospital
Topless bar has new life as turtle hospital
By Jane Sutton
MARATHON, Florida (Reuter): The building that once housed the only topless bar in the island fishing community of Marathon now serves as a hospital for the growing number of endangered sea turtles afflicted with a deadly tumor disease.
The Hidden Harbor Environmental Center, formerly Fanny's bar, is believed to be the only hospital in the world devoted exclusively to ailing sea turtles.
Its founders, charter boat captain Tina Brown and hotelier Richard Moretti, have been rescuing stranded sea turtles in the middle Florida Keys since 1985.
They opened the non-profit hospital two years ago while struggling to treat a growing epidemic of a cauliflower-like tumors that blind the giant turtles and immobilize their flippers.
"It's a very graphic, nasty looking disease," said Brown. "The tumors usually affect their eyes first so they can't see to eat."
All five U.S. sea turtle species, which can each weigh up to 400 pounds (181 kilograms), are already endangered or threatened. Recent studies by the Florida Department of Natural Resources indicate 50 percent of the sea turtle population in the Florida Keys have the tumor disease, called fibropapilloma.
It was first seen among green sea turtles and is spreading rapidly among loggerheads and other turtle populations in the Atlantic, Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Virus
Studies of the Hidden Harbor patients, carried out by Elliot Jacobson of the University of Florida, have shown the tumors are caused by a virus. Biologists believe pollution is weakening the turtles' immune systems, making them suddenly more vulnerable.
By the time tumor-stricken turtles are brought to the center, they are usually starving. Brown and Moretti fatten them up with fish, squid and turtle chow, then haul them into the center's operating room on golf carts.
Lisa Bramson, a volunteer veterinarian from Key West, rolls them onto a reconfigured gynecological examination table and surgically removes the tumors.
The turtles recuperate in a saltwater swimming pool for a year, then are released if they regain their health. Relapses are frequent, and about 40 percent have inoperable internal tumors and die anyway, Brown said.
The center has treated hundreds of turtles for other ailments as well. Sea turtles are notorious for raiding lobster traps and getting their flippers tangled in trap lines.
"They crunch right through the wooden traps to get the lobsters and eat the lobsters whole in the shell," Brown said.
Others have lost flippers to sharks and boat propellers, but can be released once the infected wounds heal and they learn to swim and steer with the three remaining flippers.
"Like handicapped people, they learn to use what they have," Brown said.
Those with propeller gashes often have air trapped between the layers of their shells. The bubbles make them swim lopsidedly, rubbing callouses on the soft skin around the shell.
Brown and Moretti patch the broken shells with fiberglass, and attach one-pound (0.45 kg) weights to compensate for the air bubbles. That allows them to submerge and swim normally, and the callouses disappear.
The turtle tenders hope to attempt a cornea transplant on a female loggerhead who survived eye tumor surgery but was left blinded.
"If I can get her one good eye I could let her go," Brown said.
They have the necessary state and federal permits and are awaiting an international trade permit to use corneas from farm- raised sea turtles in the Cayman Islands.
A veterinarian has volunteered to do the transplant, though others have dismissed the effort as quixotic.
"I've been told it's unrealistic to put so much effort into saving one turtle," Brown said. "But the way I see it, the more I get out there, the better."