Sea Turtle, Inc. building new 15,000-square-foot hospital

Jan. 7—SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — Cold and hunger.

Nets, fishing line, plastic and disease.

Atlantic green sea turtles face all manner of ailments and injuries, and that's why Sea Turtle, Inc. is building a new 15,000-square-foot hospital.

"The new hospital is fully enclosed, and it is two stories," said Wendy Knight, CEO of STI, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to rescue, rehabilitate and release injured sea turtles.

Knight and her staff and volunteers at STI recently held a cold-stunned event in which it rescued 170 Atlantic green sea turtles from Laguna Madre Bay to keep them from freezing to death.

They stayed in the education building next to the STI temporary hospital that has been erected until the new facility is completed later this year.

Once the temperatures rose, 160 of them were returned to the sea.

The hospital is vital to not only the Atlantic greens but also Kemp's ridleys and other species. That's why STI has had a hospital for about 25 years.

However, it was an outdoor facility of only 400 square feet, and only a small portion was enclosed.

"We were constantly battling the elements and the weather and corrosion and salt air and temperatures and all that," Knight said. "The new hospital will be the largest fully enclosed sea turtle hospital in the world. Construction started about 40 days ago."

The entire old hospital has been demolished, and workers are grating the ground preparing for foundation work.

"In our education complex in the back, we actually have a temporary hospital erected now," she said.

"It's a large tent. Interestingly, the temporary hospital is more enclosed and protected from the weather than the permanent hospital used to be. We are set up and managing our patients in the temporary hospital. Basically you can envision a large wedding tent or a M.A.S.H. tent. It looks like that."

They currently have 12 patients in that facility for a variety of conditions.

Sea turtles have done fine for thousands of years without human intervention. Why do they need it now?

"They're critically endangered now," Knight said. "They are nearing extinction."

About half of sea turtles treated at the hospital have become entangled in fishing lines, nets, or trash such as plastic or ate something they mistook for food.

"That's the reason our education arm is so critical, to make sure people understand proper disposal of fishing equipment," she said. "Outside of that there are also boat interactions and predator attacks."

Such threats to these animals highlights the need for a bigger hospital which can accommodate more sea turtle patients.

It will have a cold stun room, which can accommodate hundreds of turtles without having to borrow locations from neighboring businesses.

"It also has a 1,000-square foot surgical center with a fully-dedicated sea turtle CAT scan machine," she said.