Many of you are probably familiar with Griffin, an adult male loggerhead sea turtle who has been a patient here for the past 2 years (arrived on Nov. 16, 2007!). He has been a patient here longer than any other sea turtle and won the Patient of the Year award in 2008.

Griffin was originally stranded off Daytona Beach,FL and was taken to the Volusia County Marine Science Center. He was unable to dive and could not eat on his own. After several weeks, the staff at the Marine Science Center decided that they would like to transfer him here to see if ‘new eyes’ could help find the mystery problem. We received him, and after some initial x-rays, found that he had a lot of gas in his GI tract.  We also treated him for a bacterial infection. He finally began, and continues to, eat on his own but also continues to float and has difficulty diving.

Griffin was taken for multiple MRIs over the past 2 years in an effort to help determine the cause of his floating. The GSTC staff was unable to determine a specific cause from those results, however it appears that he suffered a vascular event, similar to a human stroke. For those of you who know about strokes in humans, often the person has to ‘re-learn’ everything from walking, to talking, to eating.  Well, this is the same situation Griffin appears to be in.

Griffin has been receiving physical therapy twice daily on his front flippers to assist in maintaining the muscle tone. The staff is also pushing him underwater when feeding to help encourage diving behavior.  However, none of these efforts seem to be improving Griffin’s condition.  If he can’t dive, hunt for food and eat on his own, he cannot be released into the wild.

The GSTC staff has made a few attempts to create a weight belt, much like SCUBA divers use, to assist in ‘re-training’ Griffin on how to dive.  There are many variables one needs to take into account when constructing a weight belt for a sea turtle, something that has never been done before so far as we know! It has to be well fitted, not constricting of flipper movement, or abrasive in any way to the turtle, etc.  Our attempts proved unsuccessful.  However, Dr. Norton was at a workshop and began a conversation with some engineers from Georgia Tech, Savannah Campus, who seemed very interested in Griffin’s situation and the challenge presented to them.

After a few months of work, the engineers finally had a creation to try out on Griffin…his first fitting!  So on Friday, November 13, 2009 they came to the GSTC and fitted Griffin with the weight belt they had designed.  Once secured on Griffin, he was placed back in his tank, with a few staff standing close by in the tank as well, to assist if/as need.  Unfortunately, all did not go as planned and Griffin had difficulty staying upright.  It appears the weight kept shifting and the neoprene straps we not secure enough once wet.

Don’t worry yet, this was only the first attempt!  The engineers removed Griffin’s custom weight belt and have a few ideas on how to modify it that may solve the problems we encountered on this first fitting.  So, stay tuned and we’ll update you as information becomes available!

Sincerely,
Stefanie Ouellette
Marine Field Programs Coordinator