This is me beginning a tour of the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabillitation center, speaking at a station about sea turtle nesting habits.
Did you know? Sea turtles are referred to as "cool dudes" and "hot chicks," because while in the egg, their sex is determined by their temperature? when above 28 degrees celsius, they're born female, below 28 degrees, male!

This is me concluding the educational half of a KBSTRRC tour, speaking at a station about how trash polluting our ocean affects turtles.
Did you know? every piece of plastic ever produced is still around, mostly floating in our seas killing turtles, with over 8.3 billion tons just between 1950 and 2017.

This is Snooki, (Found off the coast of New Jersey, so yes the name is intentional) an adult loggerhead sea turtle. She is incredibly grumpy and likes to splash visitors and volunteers, and is unfortunately unreleasable due to an unremovable pocket of air in her shell that prevents her from diving.
She's estimated to be older than I am, if I recall correctly she's in her 20's or 30's. Did you know? Sea turtles are not in their shells, but are their shells? It's a crucial part of their skeleton, their ribs and spine baked into them, and without being able to dive and moisten it, it can sustain permanent lethal damage!
this image does not do Snooki's size justice. Her shell is easily the length of my thighs to my shoulders and she weighs approximately 300 pounds. Turtles are B I G , man.

I believe this is turtle is named Turquoise, but I might be mistaken. There were other nearly-identical juvenile green sea turtles in the hospital at the time. Even if this is not the turtle I'm thinking of, I do know why she is in the hospital: Cold Stunning. Sea turtles are endothermic, meaning cold blooded. When they swim into water too chilly for them they shut down and enter a sort of paralyzed state, they don't think, breathe, move, or anything, they're borderline dead, but if they make it back to warmer water they can recover from this state. This turtle (if she IS Turqoise) was brought in as a cold stun and suffered a predator wound while cold-stunned and immobilized. Thankfully, though the shell was pierced, it still kept the predator from taking a big bite, and she has made a wonderful recovery for her wounds at the hospital!
Did you know? the sex of a sea turtle is only determinable after they reach maturity, which could take up to thirty years! The male parts are stored in the tail, so theirs are longer than females. Because so few of the turtles at the hospital are old enough to know their sex, I usually refer to them all as "she" because it rolls off the tongue easier.

Both of these images are of the same turtle: Kaia, the best* turtle, taken one year apart. The left is last year, and the right is the year before. Despite having brains the size of my thumb, turtles contain their own distinct personaly, and oh man is Kaia's personality distinct. She only eats jumbo shrimp from one specific fishery, the refuses to be fed by anyone but specific people, she tries to take the hand of anyone handling her off of their arms, she needs to be chased around by a net in the exercise pool so that she actually swims like she needs to, and whenever there's people around and she feels like it she swims backwards just to show off how special she is. Which, of course, she is very special and everyone loves her.
*Kaia was my favorite turtle in that whole room, BUT she's only tied for first place with another favorite turtle from Sick Bay (sea turtle ICU), named Sulfur, who I unfortunately do not have photos of, but while Kaia hates everyone, Sulfur loves everyone. She is the easiest turtle to deal with, a total and complete sweetie, always eats all the food she's given without fuss, and if you stick your hand in her tank she'll put her shell under it instead of trying to eat it. (Disclaimer: she may still think your hand is food and try to eat it, but it wouldn't be out of malice!)
Did you know? Sea turtle ages are determined like trees! Their bones have growth rings within them, and those are the only accurate way to tell what age a turtle is. Because we would have to split open one of their large bones to see them, the hospital prefers to just approximate the age of their turtles.

Finally, we have a turtle named Slimey. She was brought in near-death, a cold stun victim covered in parasitic barnacles, leeches, larvae, and even missing a few scutes (shell scales), but after extensive antibiotics treatment (and volunteers having to endure absolutely PUTRID odors) she has made an astounding recovery and is expected to be released! Slimey is the biggest eater in the entire hospital, even more than the heavier Snooki, eating several kilograms of bloody mackerel every day. The water is brown by the time she's done eating due to all the blood. I did not work with Slimey, but I did work with Beryl, who was in a similar situation, and my nose did NOT like it. But just like Slimey has, we expect Beryl to make a wonderful recovery, during my time there, every day she smelled a bit better, ate a bit more, and seemed a bit less dead.
Did you know? scutes overlap each other like shingles, and throughout the life of a turtle they flake off, usually in whole pieces as new ones grow in underneath them! (premature flakes do not have new ones underneath them, hence Slimey's scutes being of note.) They're made out of the same material as our fingernails, but thick enough to withstand TONS (not literally) of pressure!