Visitors to the Aquarium of the Pacific can now get an up-close look at Meatloaf, a rescued green sea turtle undergoing rehabilitation after a serious flipper injury, according to officials.
Meatloaf, who weighs more than 200 lbs, was rescued earlier this year after being found tangled in fishing line and rope in the San Gabriel River, aquarium staff said. The rope had cinched around one of her front flippers and worn the tissue down to the bone, necessitating urgent medical care.
“It took longer than expected to get her positioned out of the water,” said Nate Jaros, vice president of animal care at the Long Beach aquarium. “She’s a very large turtle, the largest turtle we’ve worked on.”
Despite the severity of her injuries, Jaros described Meatloaf as being in generally good condition and otherwise healthy before she was entangled. She has been recovering for three months since her first surgery to save her flipper and has shown promising improvement, though her journey is far from over. Turtles can take up to a year to fully recover from such injuries, according to Jaros.
“The entangled line severely damaged a front flipper, cutting off blood supply,” Dr. Lance Adams, the aquarium’s director of veterinary services, said in a statement. “We have been doing all we can, including surgery, to try and save the flipper. It is showing some early promising signs of healing.”
Meatloaf’s ordeal highlights a broader issue facing marine wildlife along the Southern California coast.
Jaros said sea turtles are drawn to river environments for their warmer temperatures and available food sources, but those same waterways act as funnels for urban runoff and debris, making entanglement a recurring danger for the species.
“There’s definitely a trash and plastic waste problem in that area where sea turtles are heavily concentrated,” he said.
Meatloaf’s rescue was made possible by aquarium volunteers who conduct weekly and monthly field surveys monitoring green sea turtles in the San Gabriel River, according to Jaros. When community science volunteers first spotted the entangled turtle, they contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s stranding hotline and kept constant watch until aquarium staff could respond.
Veterinarians then assessed whether Meatloaf could be safely disentangled in the water or needed to be brought in for further care, Jaros said. Ultimately, the veterinarians deemed it necessary to bring her to the aquarium.
Meatloaf now swims in the aquarium’s sea turtle rehabilitation area, which opened in January. The 4,000-gallon pool was designed to accommodate rescued sea turtles found across Los Angeles County.
The pool is open for public viewing, allowing visitors a real-time look at marine animal recovery.
According to Jaros, this visibility helps educate the public on the complexities and specifics of the marine animal rehabilitation process.
Meatloaf is not the first turtle to call the pool home. Before her, there was Porkchop, who was also rescued from the San Gabriel River with similar front flipper injuries.
She ultimately had to have her flipper amputated, according to Jaros. After a year of post-amputation evaluation to ensure she could survive independently, Porkchop was released back into the wild in February and has since been spotted swimming alongside other sea turtles.
The Aquarium of the Pacific is one of only two facilities in Southern California with a dedicated sea turtle rehabilitation space, a distinction that puts it at the center of the region’s efforts to protect an increasingly threatened species. The other is SeaWorld San Diego.
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