Our team is regularly doing daily or weekly tasks at the Clinic. For examples this week was dedicated to the building of a new nursery for Bob, Maeva and Luce, the hatchlings we rescued a few months ago at Tetiaroa during our nesting monitoring program. The babies are growing fast, and we are anticipating their needs for larger individual spaces within the lagoon.
Moreover, every month (and every week for young turtles), all sea turtles of the Clinic are measured and weighted, in order to evaluate their growth and to insure they get the right amount of food every day. Even though weighting and measuring small turtles is quite easy, it is getting complicated with larger ones, such as Apetahi (above picture), the adult green turtle who arrived a few months ago after she had been injured by a spear gun on top of her head. As she is big, wild, fast, and located in the large rehabilitation lagoon, it is a whole mission to catch her for measures.
The whole team comes together to catch her, weight and measure her, and bring her back in the water as fast as possible. We were also excited to see that the healing of the wound on her head is almost complete, so she will be released this following month.
For this year, the Sea Turtle Clinic is supported by the Vilebrequin company, the Pacsafe one, the Air Tahiti Nui airline company and the Foundation Nature et Découvertes. Since 2004, our Clinic is approved by Ministerial Decree from the Ministry of the Environment and the transportation of the turtles from the all French Polynesia is done thanks to the airline company Air Tahiti.
