Key Vocabulary Terms

Carapace: the hard back shell of a sea turtle

Chronic: persisting or continuing for a long time

Debilitation: very weakened state/condition

Ethogram: a catalog or table of all the different kinds of behavior or activity observed in an animal

Epibiota: living organisms that can be found growing on another organism (like barnacles on a sea turtle shell)

Nutrient: a substance that is essential for growth and/or life

Treatment: medical care given to a patient for an illness or injury

Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN): intravenous method of providing nutrients to turtles that are too weak to eat on their own, sometimes used with severe chronic debilitation cases

Signs: a term used in veterinary medicine to indicate evidence of a disease or illness (compared to symptoms, used in human medicine)

Some of the common signs of chronic debilitation in sea turtles include: heavy epibiota load, being underweight, and being anemic (having low red blood cell counts)! See the barnacles on Citrus' carapace (shell) in the image below?

Yes! Thanks to the treatments available in our hospital, many of our chronic debilitated patients make a full recovery and are released!

Total Parenteral Nutrition, freshwater soaks to remove epibiota, and iron injections to help anemia are all treatments that could be used in our chronic debilitated patients!