Turtles No. 4 and No. 7 were hoisted out of tanks Tuesday on canvas turtle stretchers so Georgia Aquarium staff could affix satellite tags to their shells.
The five loggerhead sea turtles, which the aquarium has been caring for since February at its quarantine facility, never received names.
“With animals that are rehabilitated, we want them to go back to the ocean, and we do not want them to like people,” said Tonya Clauss, the aquarium's chief clinical veterinarian.
Not liking people didn't seem to be a problem for the first turtle, who jumped when a pit tag was inserted under its skin. It took up to eight staff members to hold down the animals while three types of tags -- the satellite tag, a pit tag and a flipper tag -- were attached.
Four out of the five turtles the aquarium received headed back to the wild Wednesday morning, in a truck bound for Jekyll Island, where they join other turtles that were stranded together on a beach of Ocracoke Island, N.C., on Feb. 6. One turtle, who is still not eating properly, will remain in Atlanta.
The reptiles came to Atlanta for rehab when their gastrointestinal systems stopped functioning in response to water temperatures that dipped to exceptionally low temperatures; an event that stranded 5,000 sea turtles in Florida alone, said Terry Norton, director and veterinarian of the Georgia Sea Turtle Center at Jekyll Island. Stranding is a condition that prevents the turtles from re-entering the water. Norton and his staff cared for eight out of the group of 13, the other five came to the aquarium. He's already released four back to the ocean.
The satellite tags will show researchers where the animals go and even how and where they mate.
“We had one turtle that was stranded on the gulf coast of Florida, and we rehabilitated her and took her back to where she was stranded,” Norton said. “She went all the way down the west coast and back up the east coast of Florida in about two weeks.
“Then there was a male with a satellite tag, too, and we think they bred in a creek right off of Jekyll. She went to down to Cape Canaveral, and we think she hatched there.
"It was surprising. It told us it doesn’t matter where you release them. They’re pretty much going to go where they want to go.”
The small green boxes with antennae have a battery life of two years and will transmit a signal to a satellite each time the animal surfaces for air. The movements of these turtles will be tracked on the aquarium’s Web site and at www.seaturtle.org.
“If there weren’t so many people who monitor and study sea turtles, we never would have known these turtles were in such a difficult situation," Clauss said. "Early response has allowed over 4,000 of these animals to be saved. If this kind of climate change can affect turtles, it could affect people."
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