Grant: 25-033C
Project Title: Sea Turtle Surgery Support
Project Manager: Heather Barron
Organization: Loggerhead Marinelife Center (Non-Profit Organization)
Grant Amount: $11,550.00
Completion Date: 2026-02-25
Summary: The Rehabilitation Department at Loggerhead Marinelife Center (LMC) treats over 200 juvenile to adult sea turtle patients and thousands of hatchlings annually. LMC has a large campus that expanded in 2022, doubling its capacity to accept patients, including those with fibropapillomatosis. LMC responds to both live and dead sea turtle strandings across 150 miles of Florida's east coast, performs necropsies, and assists Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission with stranding- and rehabilitation-related activities. LMC also performs over 100 surgical procedures annually. Through this project, LMC will improve surgical care for sea turtle patients. This includes a new surgical table as LMC's table is designed for small animals and is not of sufficient size for larger adult sea turtles. It also cannot handle the weight and thus some features on our current table are now broken, such as the ability for the surgeon to raise and lower the table.
Results: Custom made surgical table was ordered and installed in the dedicated surgical suite at LMC. The surgeons at LMC love this table for many reasons, including its height adaptability in being able to be used either with surgeons sitting or standing. The technicians love it because it is so easy to slide even the largest turtle from our gurney onto the table and then use the hydraulic lift to raise it to a level that everyone can work at. The table is used for multiple types of procedures an average of five times per week. Some examples include surgical procedures, such as limb amputation, shell repair, or fibropapilloma tumor removal. These procedures can take many hours, and the surgical table has proven especially valuable in these cases due to the strong heating element that allows us to warm the entire table to improve comfort and recovery in our ectothermic patients. We also do endoscopic procedures, such as gastrointestinal foreign body removal or bronchoscopy to remove tracheal obstructions. The longer and wider design of the surgical table is especially valuable in these cases as it allows for additional space to place all of our needed equipment. Additionally, we use the table to perform diagnostic procedures, such as bronchoalveolar lavage. The ability of the table to be able to tilt up to 45o is so crucial to these procedures in being able to tilt the animal head down to make sure we retrieve as much for the fluid instilled into the lungs as possible. Finally, we use the table to perform treatment procedures, such as placing wound VACs (Vacuum Assisted Closure devices) or feeding tubes.