Training vets, saving turtles

To raise the profile of the plight of sea turtles and marine plastics London Vet Show donated their recycling stand to Wildlife Vets International for us to rebrand. Did you see us? We couldn't make the stand out of anything plastic without a very good reason and so the majority of the stand was printed on to card-board. It will be used again and then safely recycled. We spoke to hundreds of delegates at the show about the sea turtles and the other WVI projects around the world. It was very clear and reassuring that as the veterinary professions we are becoming more aware of what veterinary conservation looks like, how best it should be carried out, and that we must use vets and veterinary nurses who have the knowledge, understanding and clinical skills that enable them to hit the ground running and make a positive impact

I have been working with Wildlife Vets International this year to establish protocols and treatment plans for loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) that have traumatic injuries, sometimes secondary to subclinical ingestion of plastics, which debilitates the turtles and can cause them to get hit by boats, or due to weakness are more likely to get tangled up in abandoned fishing nets and tackle. Myself and Tania Monreal (a WVI vet who is an expert in sea turtles) have been working with two turtle rescue centres in Europe on establishing key protocols such as multimodal analgesia, anaesthesia, nutritional support, wound management, fluid resuscitation and blood sampling to enable a manual WBC to be carried out. All of these aim to improve the prognosis for these amazing, beautiful animals and always aiming to getting them back in to the wild as soon as possible, important to be mindful that this must be the key aim of all good rescue centres or any species.