A black turtle that washed up on Auckland's Takapuna beach in a critically-ill condition has been nurtured back to health at Auckland Zoo.
Usually found thousands of kilometres away in warmer waters near Costa Rica or the Galapagos Islands the critically-ill turtle washed up on Auckland's Takapuna beach just over a week ago.
Spotted by a member of the public she was dehydrated and had a deep wound in her shell.
"This turtle was very cold. It had a body temperature of 16 degrees celsius which is too cold for a turtle of this species," said Celine Campana, a vet nurse at Auckland Zoo.
Carefully nursed back to health by Auckland Zoo staff the 26kg reptile was given liquids through a feeding tube and had her temperature slowly brought up to 25 degrees.
This recovering black turtle is fed twice a day on a special feeding table to help her properly swallow her food. The food is a special high energy canned food made for cats and dogs, but also turtles.
Now the endangered sea-creature is starting to swim again but she still doesn't have a name. In fact it's even proving tricky to know for certain whether she's actually a she.
"Generally speaking with a sea turtle, we can't establish its sex until it reaches a certain size, and this turtle is too small to definitively say either way," said Campana.
The vets have worked out she's somewhere between 10 and 20 years old but how a black turtle made it all the way to an Auckland beach is still a bit of a mystery.
"If only they could speak, we have no idea," said Campana.
For now she's off to Kelly Tarltons for rehabilitation until a decision is made in the warmer months about whether she can safely return to sea and make her way back to where she belongs.
