Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Charlie the turtle isn't even two years old yet but she's already packed plenty of drama
into her short life. She was raised in a conservation project in Colombia before being released
in to the wild. Eleven months later she was found 2000 miles away in the sea off the Florida
coast. But the fisherman who rescued her found the juvenile turtle in a bad way.
Unfortunately there is a lot of plastic out in the ocean. She got confused and ate a little
of it and it plugged up her bowel and she started to float and so we brought her to
the hospital. We gave her some antibiotics and gave her a little Metamucil and she is
just she is just much better. You know at the turtle hospital they come in, they eat,
they poop and they are out.
Sea turtles often mistake plastic items for jellyfish or other fish. Swallowing plastic
is now one of the biggest dangers to turtles in the wild. Charlie got plastic confused
for a jellyfish and that's why she wound up in the hospital. We just gotta keep plastics
out of our oceans. An endangered species, Charlie has been tagged so that biologist
can track her progress and they are hoping Charlie's plight will stop people discarding
plastic in the world's oceans.