When rescuers found Habanero off the coast of Witsand, South Africa, last February, the endangered loggerhead sea turtle was in bad shape.
He had thousands of leeches and their eggs covering his body, and he was weak, dehydrated and barely able to move. The parasites left him severely anemic.
Experts at the Turtle Conservation Centre in Cape Town, a project of the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation, removed the leeches, and his blood levels slowly returned to normal. But veterinarians soon found another serious problem, a swollen and painful left elbow.
An X-ray showed severe destruction of the bones in the elbow joint, likely caused by chronic infection. His vet, Dr Bernice van Huyssteen, collected a sample of joint fluid for analysis and, once he was strong enough, Habanero was put under for surgery to remove dead and infected tissue from the joint.
Even after months of antibiotic treatment, he did not improve, and the infection began to spread to other parts of his body. His veterinary team decided the flipper had to be amputated.
“After thorough consultation with other sea turtle vets around the world, we all agreed: Continuing with antibiotics alone would not save the infected flipper or Habanero,” Dr van Huyssteen said in a statement.
“After a lot of careful thought, our veterinary team made the difficult but hopeful decision to amputate the damaged front left flipper. Removing the original source of infection gives Habanero his best chance at life.”
The wider veterinary community helped support the operation, including the Morukuru Goodwill Foundation, which sponsored Habanero’s adoption to the aquarium, and the Sharp Exotic and Small Animal Veterinary Clinic, which provided resources while the Two Oceans Aquarium underwent construction.
Dr van Huyssteen’s team completed the amputation in about 1.5 hours. After the surgery, the team found a large ball of necrotic material, about the size of a chicken egg, inside the joint space, which confirmed the amputation was needed to fully remove the infection.
Since the operation in December, Habanero has been moved into a large holding pool in the Turtle Conservation Centre’s rehabilitation space, where he has been learning to swim with three flippers.
“We are truly happy that everything went well with his surgery. His prognosis for long-term recovery is still guarded, as he has small spots of bone infection present in his other flippers,” Dr van Huyssteen said.
“We hope that, because the primary cause of infection (the original bad elbow) has been removed, the other spots of infection in the body will respond to systemic antibiotics, and the infection can be cleared up.”
His care team will continue to monitor him with bloodwork and CT scans, and treatment is expected to last several months before he can be cleared for release back into the ocean. Regular radiographs have shown no new sites of infection, and his other flippers appear stable.
“Habanero’s story has not been a straightforward one; he has endured immense hardship with remarkable determination,” the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation wrote in a blog post.
“Habanero is proof of the remarkable courage of turtles, and a reminder that there is real hope on the horizon.”
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