A necropsy on a dead leatherback turtle towed in at the Ċirkewwa quay by the Armed Forces of Malta yesterday found that the turtle died from an infection in the intestines which caused liver malfunctions, followed by further secondary infections in the lungs.
The Malta Environment and Planning Authority said in a statement this afternoon the necropsy was carried out by veterinary Anthony Gruppetta.
Plastic was found in the intestines and this probably triggered the massive infection in the intestines. The turtle had been dead between one and three weeks.
The turtle was first noticed out at sea in the Comino Channel the previous evening.
This species, Dermochelys coriacæ, was not commonly seen in the Mediterranean and in Maltese waters and the last confirmed sighting probably dated back some decades ago, Mepa said.
The leatherbacks that come in the Mediterranean are from an Atlantic Ocean sub-population. Leatherback turtles are highly migratory, crossing the Atlantic Ocean and occasionally entering the Mediterranean Sea. They feed exclusively on jellyfish and jelly like creatures.
Leatherback turtles, along with all the marine turtles, were protected in Malta since 1992 through legislation which at the time reflected the obligations of the Barcelona Convention. This species is also protected under CITES, the Bern & Bonn Conventions and under the Habitats Directive, and is classified as “Animals of Community Interest in need of Strict Protection”.
Although their distribution is wide, numbers have seriously declined globally. The northwest Atlantic populations were the ones that generally swam into the Mediterranean, and their normal nesting areas were in the southeastern USA and the Caribbean Sea.
They are the largest sea turtle species, and among the heaviest modern reptiles globally. They can grow up to a weight of 800 kgs. They do not have a hard ‘outer’ shell, but a carapace that is elongated and covered by skin and oily flesh.
They also have no claws on the flippers which are more elongated and paddle like than in other sea turtles. The leatherback turtle is also quite special as it has the widest range of any of the sea turtles and tolerates very cold waters unlike other reptiles, due to adaptations in the circulatory apparatus of their limbs, high oil content and enormous body size. The dead specimen at Ċirkewwa had a carapace of about 1.5m by 1.3m, and was nearly 2m long from head to tail.