Mississippi Aquarium releases first loggerhead turtle

BILOXI, Miss. (WXXV)- The Mississippi Aquarium has now released its first-ever Loggerhead sea turtle back into the wild.

Thursday afternoon, Rhombus, a loggerhead turtle, made his return to the Gulf, alongside a Kemp’s Ridley.

Due to his larger size, aquatic experts say it took multiple people to safely get him back into the water unlike the smaller Kemp’s Ridley they typically handle.

We spoke with a doctor at the Mississippi Aquarium about how they track turtles even after being released into their natural habitat. Dr. Alexa Delaune said, “When we get sea turtles in for rehabilitation, one of the most important things we do, especially on the bigger ones that have a chance of having interactions with humans before, is to check and see if they have tags. And you can have external flipper tags or internal flipper tags called pit tags. And this tells us if the turtle’s been caught before, if it’s had any previous medical history or medical treatment and that way we can monitor if one turtle just keeps getting caught over and over and over again to see maybe how we can prevent that from happening. Then, we can also say hey if you ever see this turtle, reach out to us because we treated it here at Mississippi Aquarium, and we can all share information about where it’s been, where it’s been caught, where it’s been treated, and learn more about their natural history.”

If you are interested in helping with sea turtle rehabilitation, you can visit the Mississippi Aquarium’s website to adopt a turtle.