Marine turtles in rehab in Ecuador beachside hospital
Inside Ecuador’s turtle rehabilitation centre
Location: Salango, Ecuador
Marine turtles often mistake plastic for jellyfish
Most of these turtles have trash or fish hooks in their intestines
(SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) MARINE WILDLIFE REHABILITATION CENTRE DIRECTOR, RUBEN ALEMAN, SAYING:"After gathering information and doing necropsies in 2012 in different beaches we observed that 98% of the causes of sea turtle's stranding and mortality was human. That's why we created the centre."
The Marine Fauna Rehabilitation Center offers long-term treatments
They’ve returned 300 adult turtles to the wild
(SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) MARINE WILDLIFE REHABILITATION CENTRE DIRECTOR, RUBEN ALEMAN, SAYING:
"Our job is to rehabilitate, as our name points out. We receive animals from all of Ecuador's coast, mainly marine turtles, and we rehabilitate them. So animals coming from different beaches in Ecuador and we do check-ups, we stabilize them, if they need surgery we perform surgery and afterwards we put them under rehab. Once this rehab period is over we free them, we return them to their habitat."
