Rhonda

Kemp's ridley (Lepidochelys kempii)

(ST 0856)

Age Class	Adult
Gender	Female
Date Stranded	July 28, 2008
Location of Stranding	Cape Romano (Collier Co.), Florida
Date of Arrival	July 28, 2008
Number of Days of Care	6 days

Final Disposition

Euthanized August 4, 2008 for internal tumors

Turtle upon admission to Hospital.

7/29 Turtle was found floating near Cape Romano and was transported to Mote for rehabilitation. Turtle has two tumors, possibly fibropapillomas, is floating, and has large areas of injury to both the carapace and plastron. Barnacles were removed from carapace to reveal abscesses over 3/4 of the carapace. Have started on antibiotics and will remove air from coelomic cavity tomorrow. 8/3 Radiographs revealed multiple internal tumors. Turtle will be euthanized tomorrow. 8/5 Turtle was euthanized yesterday and necropsy was performed this morning. Heart and lungs were both loaded with tumors, so much so that very little normal tissue remained of either organ. Will be doing histopathology to determine if tumors were fibropapillomas (FP) or not but all tumors were extremely fibrous making it likely it is FP.