‘Proving to be a fighter’: Rescued Garden City sea turtle on the mend after injury
A sea turtle rescued by a beachgoer on Halloween morning near the Garden City Pier has turned out to be a “fighter,” despite a large cut on his neck and having a stomach full of plastic, according to the South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston.
Michael Myers, a juvenile, nearly 5-pound green sea turtle, was transported to the Sea Turtle Care Center after being found with a “fresh laceration from the top of his neck to his left shoulder,” causing an impact to his jugular and profuse bleeding, the aquarium wrote in an online blog about the turtle.
The injured turtle was sedated, but, unfortunately, numerous attempts to close the wound were unsuccessful. Michael Myers was then packed with gel foam, bandages and a compression wrap to help with clotting, the aquarium said.
“The blood loss from the initial impact in the water and during the triage process was significant, so the goal is to get Michael Myers to a more stable point before any further wound care can be done,” the blog states.
Days after being rescued, the turtle was able to enter a shallow-water baby pool, where he eventually began swimming in a tank of about a foot of water. Michael Myers is now eating again and bleeding from his wound has stopped. But, in three days’ time, he passed more than 110 small pieces of hard plastic and food-packaging materials, the aquarium stated.
“That is a huge amount of foreign material for a juvenile turtle, who weighs less than five pounds, to have ingested,” the blog states. “Michael Myers has endured a lot in his short life, but he is proving to be a fighter!”
This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 12:54 PM.
