IMIS

Mote's Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Hospital provides state-of-the-art critical care and chronic care for stranded sea turtles. The hospital's mission is to rescue animals that strand alive, rehabilitate the animals that can be saved, return animals to the wild, and necropsy the dead animals to learn how to help the live ones. Staff seeks to learn information that will expand our knowledge of the basic biology, the veterinary care and the disease processes of sea turtles. With the animals that are released back into the wild, we make every effort to do follow-up monitoring, which tells us how successful the rehabilitation was and adds to the basic understanding of the short- and long-term movements of these animals. After release, the turtle movements are followed by Mote's Sea Turtle Conservation and Research Program. Mote expanded the Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Hospital to double its capacity and allow Mote to provide care to twice the number of sea turtle patients at any given time. The increased capacity is especially important with so many sea turtles being affected by red tide and human interactions over the past few years. The hospital has treated 294 patients of five sea turtle species since opening in 1995. HOW TO HELP: Donations to Mote’s Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Hospital can be sent through the Development Office at Mote Marine Laboratory, 1600 Ken Thompson Parkway, Sarasota, FL 34236. Please mark the donation “Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Hospital.” Call (941) 388-4441, ext. 373 for more information. For more information on Mote’s sea turtle rehabilitation, conservation or research programs visit www.mote.org/