Sea turtles with about two years arrive at the Florida hospital, special for this type of animals, with fibropapillomatosis, a deadly disease caused by a type of herpes virus.
Two-year-old turtles and what they are still too young to know if they are male or female, they are infected with this disease that causes a series of tumors as large as golf balls in their body.
The experts still they are unable to understand how this virus is contracted or the causes, although some research has indicated that it has to do with pollution and global warming. At the same time that the population of sea turtles is recovering with very good numbers, the cases of fibropapillomatosis have multiplied, filling the corridors of this facility known as the Hospital de Tortugas.
Doug Mader, a veterinarian at this hospital, says that when he started working 20 years ago he would 6 to 7 interventions in a month with this complication. Now they are done from six to eight a week. Each turtle requires several operations to remove all tumors, which cover its necks, lower part and eyes. Which means that many times they go blind, making it impossible for them to search for food.
Green sea turtles were listed as endangered species in 1976But now their population has increased considerably with 28.000 nests counted last year in Florida.
Already in 2012 it was also quite rare to find a turtle admitted with tumors in both of your eyesBut since the fall of 2013, every time a turtle has arrived at the hospital with this type of virus, they had them covered. After spending a year in the hospital pools, tumor-free, the turtles finally return to their natural habitat.
Although the ones that have llesions in the lungs and the kidneys there is no way to save them.