Determination of the Factors That Can Influence Rehabilitation of Caretta in the Lampedusa Sea Turtle Rescue Center Between 2001-2016

Lampedusa Sea Turtle Rescue Center, Italy

Abstract: Over the last decades, the status of sea turtles and the need for their protection have increasingly captured the interest of citizens, and the number of sea turtle rescue centers is generally increasing in all the world, especially in Italy, where we count more than 25 first aid stations. The Lampedusa Sea Turtle Rescue Center started its activity since 1990, and in this paper we analyze data from 2812 Caretta, rescued until 2016. Here we analyze which factors may affect the rehabilitation success of injured sea turtles hosted in our Center. We underline the following factors: type of clinical case, animal’s health condition and the presence of a qualified surgeon. For the first factor we estimated the percentage of survival animals with the following clinical cases (n = 928): infections, fin/carapace/head fractures, fin/carapace/head wounds, hook in esophagus/intestine/stomach/mouth, fishing line from mouth/cloaca, fishing line from mouth and cloaca; 5 of the analyzed clinical cases show a % of rehab success inferior to the 50% (head fracture, fishing line from cloaca/mouth/mouth and cloaca, hook in intestine). For the second factor we estimated the outcome of therapies (recovery achieved/death) and health condition (good health condition/depressed/comatose) using Fisher exact test. The Fisher’s test confirmed how health condition can significantly affect sea turtles rehabilitation success (Fisher test = 369,894; d.f. = 2; P  0.001; n = 967). For the last factor, we divided the study period in five subperiods (2001-2003, 2004-2006, 2007-2009, 2010-2012, 2013-2016) based on the evolution of surgical techniques and the presence of an expert surgeon with direct experience on sea turtle surgery; with ANOVA investigation, we confirm significantly the value of the experience of professionals involved (univariate ANOVA = 4.953; d.f. = 4; P = 0.016; n = 1011). Bycatch and health condition appear to be significantly influencing the rehab success and the presence of a competent surgeon radically determine an increase in the survival of sea turtles, as expected.