Juno Beach, Florida — A gigantic loggerhead sea turtle struck by a boat off Florida’s Atlantic coast arrived at a turtle hospital in need of medical attention, but Pennywise, weighing 302 pounds (137 kilograms), was too big for their equipment.
So the veterinarian staff at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach transported her to Jupiter Medical Center, where she hoped to receive a CT scan on a human machine. She was too big for that, too.
They swiftly devised another plan: take Pennywise to Palm Beach Equine Clinic in Wellington, where the scan would be performed using horse-specific technology.
“And, luckily, the horse-sized machine was big enough to fit this lady through,” Heather Barron, Loggerhead’s chief science officer and veterinarian, told the Associated Press.
They also received a pleasant surprise: images revealed Pennywise carrying eggs.
“We hope we’ll be able to get her back out there into the wild as soon as possible so that she can lay those eggs,” Barron said the audience.
Loggerhead turtles, an endangered species, frequently lay numerous eggs in a single season, she explained.
Pennywise came at the institute on Monday after an Inwater Research Group team discovered her drifting in the Atlantic with serious blunt force trauma to her shell, which had already begun to mend.
The Juno Beach turtle center staff estimated Pennywise’s injuries to be about a month old. Barron stated that the scan revealed some injury to the bones surrounding the spinal cord. They have the turtle on powerful antibiotics.
“Fortunately, her neurologic evaluation shows that all of her nerves are still intact. And that’s a good indicator for her. We’re quite thrilled about that, and we’ll simply double-check to make sure the sickness hasn’t progressed, and as soon as we believe the wound has healed sufficiently, she’ll be able to return to the wild.”
Despite this, Barron stated that Pennywise’s story is a “textbook case of a turtle returning to the area for mating and nesting season, only to fall victim to an entirely preventable boat-strike injury.”
Because nesting season in Florida lasts from March 1 to October 31, officials at the sea turtle center are urging boaters to slow down and be extra cautious in what they call the Sea Turtle Protection Zone, which spans a mile (1.6 kilometers) off the coast.