A 302-pound loggerhead sea turtle hit by a boat gets an oversize CT scan, with a surprise

JUNO BEACH Fla AP A massive loggerhead sea turtle hit by a boat off Florida s Atlantic coast arrived at a turtle hospital needing clinical care but at pounds kilograms Pennywise was too large to fit their equipment So the veterinary crew at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach took her to nearby Jupiter Medicinal Center hoping she could get a CT scan on a human machine She was too big for that as well They fast came up with another plan taking Pennywise to Palm Beach Equine Clinic in Wellington where the scan was performed on equipment designed for horses And luckily the horse-sized machine was big enough to fit this lady through Heather Barron the chief science officer and veterinarian at Loggerhead explained The Associated Press Turns out they also got a nice surprise Images exhibited that Pennywise is carrying eggs We hope we ll be able to get her back out there into the wild as soon as practicable so that she can lay those eggs Barron announced Loggerheads an endangered species often lay multiple clutches during a season she noted Pennywise arrived at the center Monday after a crew from Inwater Research Group unveiled her floating in the Atlantic with critical blunt force trauma to her shell that had already started to heal The staff at the Juno Beach turtle center estimated that Pennywise s injuries were about a month old Barron announced the imaging displayed specific damage to bones that surround the spinal cord They have the turtle on high-powered antibiotics Luckily right now her neurologic exam shows that all those nerves are intact And that is a great sign for her We re very excited about that and we ll just be rechecking to make sure that we have no progression of the ailment and as soon as we feel like that wound is healed well enough she can go back out into the wild Even so Barron mentioned Pennywise s story is a textbook scenario of a turtle returning to the area for mating and nesting season only to fall victim to an entirely preventable boat-strike injury Because nesting season in Florida runs from March to Oct agents at the sea turtle center are encouraging boaters to slow down and to be especially mindful in what they refer to as the Sea Turtle Protection Zone which extends a mile kilometers off the coast Frisaro released from Fort Lauderdale Florida Source