At this moment, in the waters around the Arabian Peninsula are 63 sea turtles living their second life. Brought in over the years in various forms of distress, some sick to the core, these turtles were nursed back to good health by the team at the Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project (DTRP). On Wednesday, the programme marked 20 years of service to marine life by sending the most recent inmates back to the ocean. Among these were green and loggerhead turtles (endangered) and hawksbill turtles (critically endangered). Over two decades, the project has rehabilitated and released over two thousand sea turtles. We spoke to Barbara Lang-Lenton, Director of Aquarium at Jumeirah Burj Al Arab, who is leading the Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project on behalf of the hospitality group, for a deep dive into the programme, its big wins and big challenges:
What happens when you get a distress call on the turtle rescue hotline–800-TURTLE?
Turtles breathe air, so when they are sick, they tend to stay close to the surface. Also if they have infections, or if they eat plastic, their intestines get blocked… they will develop gas and start floating. When a turtle is sick and stops moving, a lot of marine life–algae, oysters, barnacles–start colonising the turtle as if it were a rock. Generally, people will find sick or injured turtles either stranded on the beach or floating at sea. A turtle like this will not be able to dive, so it's very easy to take them, but keep it on a wet towel to make sure that it doesn't draw. If you put them in a small container, it's difficult for them to lift their head to breathe. Do not remove any of the marine life growing on them to make sure you don't hurt them.
How we respond to an 800-TURTLE call depends on where the turtle is coming from, how big the animal is and how heavy the injuries are. If the turtle is in a different emirate, like Fujairah, the environmental authorities there will collect the turtle and bring it to us. In Abu Dhabi, they have their own team that will collect the turtle and rehabilitate them there. If it is a small turtle and if the person who found the turtle is able to transport it to us, they will drive to the Burj Al Arab [aquarium] and bring it to us. When these animals are with us, we do an initial medical evaluation to see if they have heavy injuries or if they need immediate surgery. Then the turtles will stay at the Burj Al Arab, in our back-of-house facilities until they are able to dive and feed on their own. Very often turtles are positively buoyant, i.e. not fit. We need to give them fluids or even force-feed them. When they are able to start taking food on their own and can dive again, they are moved to the turtle lagoons [at Jumeirah Al Naseem]. These lagoons are connected to the sea and purposely designed for sea turtle rehabilitation. The water quality is the same as outside. We have a lot of marine life thriving in the lagoons. They have a lot of caves and spaces for the turtles to hide and sleep. We monitor how well they are doing in that environment. Once they build up enough muscle strength and they put on some weight, and the blood samples are clear, they are released.
What is the toughest part of the rescue and rehabilitation process?
We have some very hard cases like boat strikes and entanglement with fishing gear, but plastic is a bad one. Sea turtles are generally resilient and they have to be very, very sick for them to end up on a beach. So when they ingest plastic, it's not an immediate risk like a boat strike or a fishing hook. It is a slow process—the turtle stops eating. Sometimes they haven't taken any food for three, maybe four months. They get emaciated, really thin. And those are the toughest toughest ones to treat. Sometimes, the intestines are already necrotic; there's nothing we can do for them… to give a sense of just how bad plastic is for a small turtle, even a little plastic bead can kill them, because it will not go through the small intestine. For larger turtles, even some plastic threads can be fatal–they can get entangled with sea grass and get ingested. And then it just super hard and blocks everything. So, it doesn't take much plastic [to hurt a turtle].
If you were to pick one success story from the past 20 years…
We have a case of a green turtle that went all the way [from UAE] to Thailand! Dibba was brought in ‘positively buoyant’ from a lung infection. We released her from Fujairah, where she was found. It was the longest recorded [journey] for that species at the time–more than 8,000km in less than nine months! For me, I have an emotional connection with this turtle Farah. Shaikh Fahim [Al Qasimi], found this turtle when he was free diving and she was entangled in a fishing line having lost one of the front flippers. He brought the turtle to us, and that’s how he started working with us. So obviously that's an important one for us!