Animal Hospital Patients

If you find any sick or injured turtles, contact our 24-hr rescue hotline right away. 727-441-1790 Ext. 1.

Clearwater Marine Aquarium is a working animal hospital.
You’ll see a number of rescued animals currently undergoing rehabilitation in our marine animal hospital. A majority of these animals are sea turtles. They may be suffering from various issues, including buoyancy disorders, cold stun symptoms, fibropapilloma tumors and boat strike or entanglement injuries. Our permanent resident animals also routinely receive medical care and treatments from the animal hospital. We have a full-time Vet and Vet Tech to assist all of our animal care teams.

Our sea turtle rehab center is one of only six facilities in Florida that treat sea turtles with the fibropapilloma virus in our ICU. This virus causes the growth of tumors that can be removed surgically with variable success for regrowth.

Learn more about our current animal hospital patients below, and see them in our surgical suite or ICU hallway on your next visit. 

Sea Turtle Rehab Stats 

2019: 28 Live sea turtle intakes.

2018: 147

(May 17, 2019)

WATCH THE SEA TURTLE REHAB WEBCAM

How do the sea turtle patients get their names? The sea turtle rehab team names each sea turtle, and in order to come up with the names of the patients, the team comes up with different themes. We have had themes like cars, cereal and most recently, flowers! After a theme is selected, it goes in alphabetical order. Once all of the letters in the alphabet are used, a new theme is chosen. So if you are wondering why a sea turtle might have a funny name, it’s because of the order in which the sea turtle came in and what theme it is.

All marine turtle footage taken in Florida was obtained with the approval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) under conditions not harmful to marine turtles. Footage was acquired while conducting authorized conservation activities pursuant to FWC MTP-18-172.