An emaciated loggerhead sea turtle that washed up on the south end of Tybee Island on Thursday is recuperating at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.
Employees of the Tybee Department of Public Works spotted the animal on the 19th Street sandbar and alerted Tybee Ocean Rescue. About 9:15 a.m., three lifeguards swam out to the sandbar with a rescue board and ferried the 50-pound turtle back to shore just as they would an injured swimmer.
The lifeguards took the loggerhead by ATV to the Tybee Island Marine Science Center, said Capt. Hunter Robinson of Tybee Ocean Rescue.
There staffers kept it quiet and cool until Georgia sea turtle coordinator Mark Dodd could arrive to take the stranded animal to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island.
Dodd, a senior biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said the turtle’s concave bottom shell and atrophied muscles were signs of poor nutrition. At 30 inches long it was about two-thirds the size of mature females that come up on Georgia beaches to nest.
via Sea turtle rescued on Tybee Island | savannahnow.com.
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