Another day, another pair of sea-turtle reintroductions

We said it before, and we’ll say it again: one of these days we’ll have to change our name to “Flying Sharks – and sea-turtles“, because we can’t seem to be able to keep up with demand for reintroducing animals to the big wide Azorean blue open ocean.

So, let’s take this opportunity to do a bit of recap, yes? First there was Iona (click for adventure #1 and adventure #2), closely followed by Tobi. Then there were two animals from Rotterdam Zoo and Nazaré from Sea Life Scarborough.

Recently, our friends from Sea Life Scarborough and Sea Life Brighton jointly hit us for yet another operation, this time a “2 for 1” deal, whereby Tarquin and Barnacle Bill were driven to Heathrow by our good friends, and partners, JCS Livestock, after which they flew to Lisbon, landing around 10 in the evening.

Needless to say that landing at that time ensures that our staff, our customs broker, our freight-forwarder for the Lisbon-Horta flight, the Airport’s Veterinarian staff and the CITES inspector basically won’t leave the cargo terminal before 2 or 3 A.M… In our case, because we were moving some deep-sea critters to a research institute in Vienna that night also, the day was breaking by the time we left the cargo terminal!

But hey, the wellbeing of the animals is the absolutel priority, and that’s why both sea-turtles spent the night in the ground handling agent supervisor’s office, to ensure they were in a quiet and climatized space, away from the forklifts offloading cargo from trucks.

So here’s a group of awesome people involved in these operations, which we should have listed long ago:

First and foremost, many thanks to Todd German and Joe Williams from Sea Life Scarborough and Brighton, respectively, for choosing us as partners in these wonderful adventures.

Then our friends Philip Knowles and Lissa Ireland, from JCS Livestock, who bend over backwards to ensure a safe pick-up from the Sea Life sites and delivery to Heathrow’s Animal Reception Centre.

Then we have Paula Pinto, supervisor of TAP Cargo, and also Salete Marques, supervisor of Menzies Aviation, who ensure that the sea-turtles get VIP treatment while on the ground at Lisbon airport.

Then come Carla Palhinhas, from CEVA Logistics, and Ezequiel Feliciano, our customs broker, who cross every t, and dot every i, ensuring that all import procedures from London, and export to Horta, are as fast and smooth as humanly possible.

Here’s a special thank you to Dr. Pedro Melo, supervisor of the airport’s veterinarian crew, who extends his day into the early hours of the morning after, to ensure these animals have the shortest transit time possible.

Also special thanks to the CITES inspectors from the Nature Conservation Institute, who also travel to the airport in the middle of the night to ensure the animals in the crates are indeed the ones in the documentation, not to mention sharing some very cool stories about their job, often involving lions, tigers, and bears! Oh, my!

Finally, a special word of thanks to Ivan Beltran and Rui Guedes, who run our facility in the Azores, and Frederick Vandeperre, whom you will see in this sexy photo applying a satellite transmitter to yet another sea-turtle. As far as we know, there’s no other turtle-scientist on this planet who has tracked more sea-turtles than Fred and we’re delighted to assist his research any way we can!

We’ll finish off by sharing below some cool photos of the process and also some news articles in the British press. Many thanks João Pedreda for the awesome photos of the whole process!
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/25482317.sea-life-brighton-successfully-return-turtle-ocean/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5e14dn6zvo

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