Green Sea Turtle Surgery

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Green sea turtles have one claw on each flipper. When the males reach sexual maturity, those claws start to grow so that they can hook onto the female's carapace and hold on. hawkspills actually have two claws on all flippers. And then their organs are all just laid out underneath their carapace... And their plastron. To do surgery on a turtle, does that ever happen? Oh yeah. Uh-huh. Most of the time when we do surgeries on turtles, it's actually to remove a flipper because it's got entangled in fishing line and it's dead.

If you think you like sea turtles, get ready to become wildly obsessed with them. Cheloniologist Dr. Camryn Allen met up with Alie on a tropical island (ok, in a hotel room on a tropical island) to chat about flipper slappings, turtle rodeos, nesting BBs, current surfing, endangered statuses, field work, sleeping under water, world records, boopable noses, male:female ratios, mind-boggling navigation, what you can do to help them, and the many mysteries that still remain. Take a deep dive into the world of seartles. Or is it surtles?

Follow Dr. Camryn Allen on Twitter

This week's donation was made to Hawaii Marine Animal Response

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Sound editing by Steven Ray Morris & Jarrett Sleeper

Theme song by Nick Thorburn

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