VIDEO - PORT ELIZABETH - BAYWORLD STAFF RAISING STRANDED LOGGERHEAD TURTLES

Raising stranded baby turtles is not for the faint hearted. This is being discovered by the Bayworld staff in Port Elizabeth.

The staff members have their hands full with a batch of loggerhead turtles that were stranded along the Eastern Cape coastline during the past two months.

KwaZulu-Natal is the nesting grounds for loggerhead and leatherback turtles. However, many strandings happen in the Eastern Cape.
Rough seas and high spring tides are the main cause of the strandings.

Weighing between 30 and a 100 grams, the babies are very vulnerable. They now have a year of rehabilitation awaiting them before they return to the big blue.

Marine Biologist Ruth Wright says, "We feed them twice a day on a diet of mixed hake and pilchards and prawns when we have them. We also have to monitor their movements and eating patterns. We weigh them once a week and we have a vet that comes in to check them."

Bayworld has another special guest, Xena, a leatherback turtle who can grow to a whopping 700 kilograms.

She recently underwent rehabilitation.

Wright says, "Wow, its incredibly difficult, worldwide leatherback turtles don't have a success rate in captivity and it’s mostly because they swim all the time and they have a very specialised diet."

Xena's diet is made up of jelly fish and bluebottles which are hard to source.

Xena was recently flown to Durban where she was released into warmer waters.

Leatherbacks are an endangered species. Only one out of every 1000 born will make it to adulthood.


VIA - sabc.co.za