A sea turtle found hypothermic and far from its normal range at Pedder Bay near Metchosin early this month could soon be headed to San Diego to finish recovering and be released into warmer waters.
The team at the Vancouver Aquarium, where the turtle was taken for rehabilitation, has worked to slowly increase her temperature by a degree per day from 8.4 C to 20 C.
“While her road to recovery is long, she is responding well,” said Aquarium spokesman Todd Hauptman.
Hauptman said the goal is to get the turtle, which is not on display for the public, healthy enough to be sent to San Diego to finish her rehabilitation and be released.
The exact timing of the transfer is not yet known and will also depend on permits.
The turtle is believed to have arrived in B.C. after getting caught in a warm current, travelling about 500 nautical miles from a loggerhead’s northernmost range in the Pacific Ocean.
The North Pacific loggerhead turtle population, currently listed as endangered in the U.S., originates from nesting sites in Japan and roams the ocean in currents, occasionally foraging closer to land along the U.S. coast from Oregon down to Mexico.
Hauptman said the work to rehabilitate the turtle would not have been possible without the Aquarium’s volunteers, donors and partners.
Discovery of the loggerhead sea turtle by fishermen in bull kelp on Feb. 3 marks only the second confirmed sighting of a loggerhead on B.C.’s coast. The previous sighting was in 2015 about 80 kilometres offshore from Tofino.
— With files from Darron Kloster, Times Colonist
