MORNING NEWSBREAK | The South Carolina Aquarium is seeing an uptick in sea turtle admissions in its Turtle Care Center over the past two weeks. As the annual stranding season is beginning, having seven turtles already at the center is a higher-than-usual number as it generally gets 30 to 40 sea turtles on average each year, according to media reports.
“These past two weeks have been a whirlwind, with seven sea turtles admitted in rapid succession and each needing individualized treatments and care,” Sea Turtle Care Center Manager Melissa Ranly said in a news release. “It’s clear that sea turtles have arrived along the South Carolina coast and are facing some unforgiving impacts out there.”
The aquarium’s team of biologists, veterinarians and volunteers are working to provide the necessary care to rehabilitate these sick and injured sea turtles. Emergencies are worked on first, and then the turtles undergo several exams to determine their treatment plan.
“We’re ready and waiting to welcome more sea turtles into our care and offer them all the support we can, and grateful for the community backing us every step of the way,” Ranly added.
Each year, the aquarium offers theme-based names for each turtle that comes into its care. This year, they are named after breakfast foods. The first turtle to arrive at the center was named Hashbrown, a juvenile green sea turtle that arrived “smothered and covered” in mud and epibiota, indicating it had been sick for quite some time.
Shortly after Hashbrown’s intake, six more juvenile turtles arrived to receive care:
- Biscuit, a juvenile green turtle that washed ashore debilitated, underweight, dehydrated, covered in epibiota, with lesions on the neck and shoulders, a dislocated flipper and a damaged flipper.
- Eleanor, a juvenile green turtle that arrived with a hook in its flipper.
- Strudel, a juvenile green turtle that washed ashore severely lethargic and emaciated, with corneal ulcers in both eyes.
- Frittata, a juvenile green turtle that was stranded, covered in sand and epibiota and had a severe ear infection.
- Poptart, a juvenile Kemp’s ridley turtle that was caught on hook and line deep in the esophagus and needed surgery upon admittance.
- Pancake, a juvenile Kemp’s ridley that was also caught on hook and line in the flipper and had ingested plastic.
Guests can witness this rehabilitation in action during an aquarium visit and come face to face with current sea turtle patients, read their stories and learn how to protect them.
In other area headlines:
CP: Group launches pilot program for perinatal families. The Beloved Early Education (BEE) Care Collective, an advocacy group that has been making headlines lately for its work with educators and parents, recently launched a pilot nutritional program to extend its early care to include offering fresh meals to Black, Latina and Indigenous pregnant women and new mothers.
CP: Charleston Anime Fest celebrates international art and local community. Animated Japanese film and TV, also called anime, combines rich, diverse storylines with gorgeous artwork, and it’s really grown in popularity in North America over the past several years. A local celebration is April 28.
CP PHOTOS: High Water Festival. This past weekend, April 20-21, High Water Festival took place at North Charleston’s Riverfront Park. Despite a hot first day and a rainy second, droves of people came to see acts like Hozier, Fleet Foxes and Noah Kahan — while many came specifically to support the local acts on the lineup, Shovels & Rope and Babe Club.
State to get big bucks for solar, clean energy programs. The South Carolina Office of Resilience (SCOR) will receive $124.4 million in federal funding to launch its Community Solar Initiative, a distributed solar generation program to install solar on single-family and multi-family homes for income-qualified homeowners and renters, and a Solar Innovation Fund designed to expand solar opportunities and deploy energy storage technologies that increase resiliency.
S.C. gas prices remain flat over previous week. GasBuddy reported the average price of gas in South Carolina was $3.23 per gallon, a drop of a half-cent over the previous week.
Special elections on Folly Beach, Kiawah Island happening today. Voters in several Lowcountry beach communities will go to the polls Tuesday to cast ballots in special elections.
New rental homes may be silver lining for Chicora neighborhood. Ten new rental homes sit within a quarter-mile of one another in the Chicora neighborhood near Reynolds Avenue’s growing business corridor, offering a silver lining for the once-neglected south end of North Charleston.
Mount Pleasant to appeal again in parking garage suit. A 2020 judgment in favor of Shem Creek Development Group left the town on the hook for $2.6 million plus legal fees in a botched parking garage agreement. Town officials said they’re taking the case to the state Supreme Court to appeal the suit and avoid paying millions in unpaid rent, legal fees and interest.
T-Pain to perform in North Charleston this summer. Grammy Award-winning artist and rapper T-Pain is bringing his ‘Mansion in Wiscansin Party Tour’ to North Charleston this summer at Firefly Distillery.
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