Sea turtle joins jet set
A rare reptile gets a VIP flight to a Boca nature center.
By Lona O'Connor
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 08, 2005
BOCA RATON — Sea turtles migrate thousands of miles by sea, but few get the opportunity to travel by private charter jet.
Ace the sea turtle took that more unorthodox route Friday afternoon to get to Florida from Mystic, Conn. She was packed in a 53-inch-square wooden crate, specially made and padded for the trip, at the Mystic Aquarium, where she has resided for nearly two years.
Bob Shanley/The Post
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Ace, a female Kemp's ridley, swims Friday at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. She is whitish colored, not olive green, because of damage from frostbite 10 years ago.
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Ace, a female Kemp's ridley, was accompanied by Mystic curator Catherine Ellis and pilot Will Waters for the nearly five-hour trip. The rare sea turtle was headed for Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, where she will live for awhile.
You could say she earned this trip, usually the prerogative of high-flying bigwigs and movie stars.
She was found nearly frozen to death 10 years ago in Long Island Sound, having veered off course on a migratory path. She is blind from unknown causes.
Once saved, her fate has been to be relocated, first from Long Island to Connecticut and now to Boca Raton, where it is unclear how long she will be able to stay.
She had to leave Mystic after fish sharing the tank with her started nipping at her. Parts of her shell and skin are damaged from the pestering fish.
In her wooden crate, Ace seemed lethargic. But once she was slipped into an outdoor saltwater tank at Gumbo Limbo, she perked up, raising her snout out of the water, snorting and vigorously splashing water on the curious group of turtle fans gathered around her.
Also gathering were angelfish and a remora, which tried to attach its suckers to Ace's tender skin. Kirt Rusenko, Gumbo Limbo's marine conservationist, took note of Ace's new tormentors and planned to remove them from the tank.
All in all, though, he was satisfied that she was settling in.
"She's had a long, confusing day," Rusenko said.
Ace's $3,600 travel expenses were covered by Boca Aviation, Sun Air, the plane's owner and other donors.
The test of her acclimation will be how soon her appetite returns. Under stress, turtles may not eat for weeks.
A veterinarian will examine her and a decision will be made about whether she could survive in the wild or have to live out her days under human care.
Gumbo Limbo is a small facility and probably can't keep her forever. As it is, the nature center will probably have to give back Ludwig, another Kemp's ridley on loan from Sea World to make room for her.
Ace also might end up at Sea World or The Living Seas at Epcot in Orlando or some other wildlife-care facility.
In the best case scenario, she would be deemed fit to hunt for shrimp in the shallow waters off South Padre Island, Texas, where marine conservationists have been building up the decimated Kemp's ridley colony.
Smallest of the sea turtles, the Kemp's ridley turtle has been on the federal endangered species list since 1970. Their numbers have declined from 42,000 nesting females in 1947 to about 1,000 in the 1980s. They are hunted for meat and eggs. Many more are caught in shrimp fishing nets. Because they usually nest in Mexico, Kemp's ridleys are rarely seen in Florida.
Ace surprised the biologists at Mystic by laying a clutch of eggs recently. She weighs about 51 pounds, which led them to believe that she was not yet ready to mate.
As sea turtles go, Ace is no great beauty. In fact, she wears the evidence of her eventful life so far. Unlike most of her kind, who have olive green shells, Ace's carapace is a whitish color that makes her look almost like an albino.
The color is from scar tissue that formed when many of her scales fell off, killed by frostbite in Long Island Sound, where she was discovered by volunteers and brought to the Riverhead Foundation. She was rehabilitated and lived at Riverhead for 10 years before being moved to Mystic.
However, her less-than-perfect appearance would not affect her love life if she returned to the wild. Male turtles, said Rusenko, are attracted to "anything that floats."
