Turtle Time! | What Sam Sees

[Music] it's me Sam and I'm at the turtle Hospital and marathon Florida whose motto is rescue rehab and release so as a rescue diver this is such an awesome opportunity she's so cute today we're going to learn about sea turtles a reptile whose genetic history goes back over 200 million years since the age of the dinosaur let's go meet the turtles and the incredible people who work to save them [Music] I love the ocean from the moment my feet touched the blue water I'm instantly transported to my happy place one of the most majestic and lovable creatures in the ocean is this little guy it is also one of the most in danger today I'm meeting Betty's urkelbot who is the operations manager at the turtle hospital in Marathon Florida she gets to work with sea turtles every day how cool is that the turtle hospital I can't wait to see some turtle go meet some so here are some juvenile green sea turtles so their names are on their show yep similar view go a hospital you have a wristband you can't really put wristbands on them but that's just make sure they're getting the right medications although they're very distinctive if you look at the side of their heads they have patterns that are unique to them similar to our fingerprints they're getting ready to pull papi here she's had some challenges with one of her flippers bone infection called osteomyelitis so we get updated radiographs regularly to see how that's progressing all right we're gonna head down here we'll let them go first and you can see those plates on their back yeah they're called scoots and they're made of keratin the same thing our fingernails are made out of scoots are the protective layer of a turtle shell and can also be found on the skin of a crocodile and the feet of birds so how did she get this phone disease she came in for a virus called fiber papillomavirus and it is something that we see primarily in the juvenile greens this virus infects the turtle skin outside the shell with warts over 50% of green juvenile sea turtles around develop islands like the Florida Keys have fibro papilloma the spread of this virus puts the species at great risk pop is really lucky to be here let's go see how her x-ray looks most of what we see come in the turtle hospital is human impact whether it be a virus you know from environmental conditions boat strikes fishing gear entanglement plastic or synthetic material ingestion so we're here to try to mitigate some of that so next time you are at the beach and see some trash pick it up you could be saving a turtles life so here you can see her body yeah we can see the flipper joints here what we're looking at today is this area here you can see the bone is deteriorated away in this flipper joint okay so it does very similar to ours Wow so you guys will not release papi until that's fully grown well this won't grow back unfortunately the bone has deteriorated due to infection then once that stabilizes and she's infection free we'll release her and she still has use of that flipper great news after nearly two years of amazing care and treatment Papi's almost ready to be released back into the wild time to meet the next patient Brianna a loggerhead sea turtle who is getting ready for a checkup there's Brianna she's huge she's fabulous she is got an attitude this one so they have to be very careful working with her Wow so what can you tell them that she is a loggerhead good question they have a very wide head in reference to the size of their body for green turtle it has a very narrow head okay and we wanted brown eye initially come here she initially came in for a boat strike and they look at her cleaned up it's gonna be easier to see but you see the back of her shell yeah had a fracture she was hit by a boat and that prod cut through the shell and also cut through her spine because the spine of a sea turtle is slow gated right in the back of her shell and it did some nerve damage so she doesn't have use of her back flippers sea turtles are air-breathing reptiles which means they can dive deep in the ocean to eat or even rest but will need to surface to breathe and she's what we call the bubble butt syndrome which is kind of silly to say but it is a thing the bubble butt syndrome which means they flew and they're not able to go underwater so for a sea turtle that means they would starve to death in the wild that we can't release those animals because their food source is at the bottom we take Waits and we adhere them to the back of the shell with some marine epoxy and that just helps her to be more comfortable act more like a turtle okay and go underwater but we can't release her with that because those scoots those plates on their back they'll continue to grow and shed for her whole life so eventually those weights will shut off and so she'll stay here forever she'll stay somewhere forever okay so what we do when they're otherwise healthy is we adopt amounts of aquariums all around the world okay even though Breanna can't go back to the wild it's great to know she'll still be adopted and have a forever home all cleaned up and ready to go bye Breanna we had so much fun at the sea turtle hospital with Betty and her team papi a green sea turtle and Breanna a loggerhead are getting excellent care here at the turtle hospital you can tell the difference between loggerheads and green sea turtles just by looking at their heads loggerheads give their name because of their big heads sorry no offense Breanna while green sea turtles heads are more narrow and sea turtles can live up to 100 years but they are in danger we can help protect and preserve these amazing species by just using less plastic and putting our garbage in the right place so remember recycle recycle recycle see you next time on but Fancy's [Music] you [Music]

Channel: National Geographic Kids

Views: 822,733

Rating: 4.6123347 out of 5

Keywords: what sam sees, scuba diver, scuba diving, national geographic kids, nat geo kids, kids, kid, for kids, national geographic, nat geo, animals, making stuff, educational, Sam, Turtle Time, rescue hospital, hospital, injured, sea turtles, amazing creatures, amazing, creatures, people, turtle takeover, turtle, episode, PLQlnTldJs0ZQHiJtBZwH91UMHdXPB3elF, PLQlnTldJs0ZR56MScVzlbeucr3brcHb-e, Sam visits a rescue hospital, injured sea turtles, total turtle takeover episode

Id: aSPppmnTrWE

Length: 7min 16sec (436 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 21 2018