The Aquarium has its own Animal Health Department, with veterinarians on staff.  Weekly, we have rounds with them to update each other on the health of our fish and turtles, and review medical cases and determine if we need to pull any of the critters out for checkups.  But... sometimes it's just easier to perform these exams underwater!

That's where Julie the vet comes in.  She's a certified scientific diver and joined us in the tank at the 10:00 dive—our first dive of the day. We had a short list of patients written out on an underwater slate, two of them being Ari our Kemp's ridley sea turtle and Myrtle the green sea turtle (who always seems to be involved with everything), as seen in this video:



It wasn't just turtles that needed attention.  Some fish were on the list too, including a couple of our green moray eels (stay tuned for an upcoming moray blog post) and a trunkfish who is being treated for a facial lesion and lives in one of our acclimation barrels temporarily.

Getting a close look at a trunkfish patient

Thanks to our vet staff for keeping our animals healthy :-)