ShareThisDUNEDIN, Fla. - The volunteer bucket brigade formed around 11 a.m. At one end tossed the chilly, choppy shallows off Honeymoon Island in the Gulf of Mexico. At the other sat a box truck holding dozens of sea turtles.
They had been plopped into kiddie pools and laundry baskets at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, then driven to a dirt road at the end of the Dunedin Causeway.
It was here that some had been found beached on the shore or skimming the surface, too cold to eat or swim. It was here that, after hours of treatment, they would return.
January's record-breaking cold snap left 4,500 turtles across Florida in paralyzing "cold stuns." Left untreated in water below 50 degrees, many faced certain death. Danielle O'Neil, the aquarium's director of sea-turtle rehabilitation, called it a "state of emergency."
So in recent weeks, aquarium and local wildlife officials responded to sightings from boaters and beachgoers and collected more than a hundred stunned turtles. Most were 3 to 8 years old, at most 20 pounds, and about the size of a manhole cover. Some were pocked with fibropapilloma tumors. All of them couldn't move.
At the aquarium, workers massaged the turtles with warm towels and heating pads and fed them small fish, squid, herring and leafy greens. Each turtle was marked with nail polish and named after an herb, spice or fruit.
About 20 died during the 24-hour therapies, the cold too much to stand. But others, over time, began to slowly regain movement, with some returning to the east coast a few weeks ago.
On a recent morning, as the bucket brigade carried the surviving turtles to the water, many began to flap their flippers and squirm. The 45 green sea turtles were carried out first. The last, a large female hawksbill, was met with a round of applause.
O'Neil, standing in the 61-degree water, gently lifted them by their shells and dipped them into the water. With a slight tweak of the tail, the turtles rocketed off into the water, fanning out in all directions.
As the turtles swam into the deep, the bucket brigade dispersed and, moving to the water's edge, waved a slow goodbye.
(E-mail Drew Harwell at dharwell(at)sptimes.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service www.scrippsnews.com)
Must credit St. Petersburg Times
