At The Turtle Hospital

Marathon
No LL

There are two other Westsails in the harbor. We met Martin, the skipper of one of those W32s. Martin told us about meeting the owner of the Turtle Hospital eating dinner at Porky's Restaurant. Martin said he asked how the hopital was funded. Ritchie, the owner, replied "I fund it. I put about two million dollars per year in to it." Wow! I thought it was just a tourist trap, and we avoided it the previous two years we were in Marathon.

Today we remedied that and we paid for a guided tour of the Turtle Hospital. It was delightful. Those turtles are wonderful creatures. They have been mistreated by man to the point where they are endangered. We learned also about the history of the hospital.

The Turtle Hospital in Marathon started out as a motel with a salt water pool. Ritchie Moretti, the owner bought the motel and intende to retire there. He built a new fresh water pool, and allowed fish in to the salt water pool to entertain the guests. One day, a little boy said, "Why don't you have turtles?" Ritchie looked into it and learned that he coudn't keep turtles without doing something positive to help them. So started the turtle hospital idea. Since then, the motel functions have faded to nothing while the hospital has flourished and grown; all without government money. I think it is a fascinating story.

They have about 60 turtles at the hospital right now. They suffer from various maladies. Some have lost flippers to fishing line entanglement. Others tangled with fishing hooks. Others have a mysterious growth of cancer-like tumors that remain unexplained.

Still others have bubble back, a singularly turtle specific ailment. Those turtles were struck by boats as the broached the surface after a long dive. They were poised to expel a lung full of air, but the boat strike forced that air in to a bubble between the turtle's body and it's shell. The shell gets a swelling, like a hunchback's hump, over the bubble. The bubble ruins the turtle's bouyancy so they can't dive. So far, all the king's horses and all the king's men and all the vets at the Turtle Hospital have not figured out how to solve the problem and return those bubble back turtles to the wild. Fascinating.

We recommend a visit to the Turtle Hospital in Marathon when you visit the Florida Keys.