A loggerhead sea turtle named Rocky paused briefly on the sand Wednesday morning before slowly crawling into the Atlantic Ocean after spending six weeks rehabbing at Florida’s Loggerhead Marinelife Center.
Turtle hospital staff and volunteers cheered as the turtle made its way down the beach, which is directly across the street from the center. Rocky was equipped with a blue tracking device on its back, which allows the staff to continue monitoring the large turtle.
Rocky, a 220-pound (100-kilograms) female turtle, was found floating off North Hutchinson Island on Dec. 29 with a tear in the lung caused by a boat strike, Andy Dehart, the center’s president and CEO, said Wednesday.
The turtle “had a perforation in the lung, so was trapping air in the body cavity, which was making it essentially be what’s called a floater,” Dehart said. “It couldn’t dive. It couldn’t get underwater.”
The center’s goal is to rehab the turtles and get them back into their natural habitat.
