South Africa: Hundred of baby sea turtles rescued after washed ashore by storm

The aquarium is currently treating approximately 400 of the 530 sick and injured turtles that were brought in.

An aquarium in South Africa has reached capacity after more than 500 juvenile sea turtles were washed up on beaches by a rare and powerful storm and rescued by members of the public.

The small turtles are largely endangered loggerheads that should be swimming the ocean. The majority of them, however, will spend their first few months of life in freshly constructed plastic tanks at a conservation centre and aquarium in Cape Town. The aquarium is currently treating approximately 400 of the 530 sick and injured turtles that were brought in, while the remainder are being sent to two other aquariums to help spread the load.

Loggerhead turtles hatch on South Africa's northeast coast, far from Cape Town. These turtles were most likely swept in by the warm Indian Ocean Agulhas Current, carried around South Africa's tip, and then washed out in the chilly Atlantic Ocean at Cape Town.

In the three to four months following hatching season, the conservation centre gets anywhere from a few to 100 stranded juvenile turtles. Its usual capacity is 150 turtles.

The turtles are ranked by how sick they are, with some requiring intensive care due to injuries, starvation, or infection. Each shell has a number printed on it to help identify it.

While the storm was a significant shock for the turtles, which are prone to extreme weather and climate change, it provided Noble-Trull and other conservationists with crucial information about another increasingly regular threat

Many of the turtles had consumed little particles of plastic, which had passed through their systems after arriving at the aquarium. Talitha Noble-Trull who works at the conservation centre had a tray full of plastic fragments, some as big as a fingernail, that she collected in one day.

The conservation crew would not ordinarily see this much evidence of plastic waste in the ocean.

Video credit: Associated Press

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