Flight of the turtles

This loggerhead really doesn't like to fly.

All 95 pounds of him squirmed and kicked his flippers as volunteer pilot Ron Santos struggled to fit him through the cockpit door. He clambered back out just as ornery some 1,300 miles later.

Even Santos, who has flown Angel Flight trips before with the East Cooper Pilots Association, had to admit it: This wasn't your usual medical transport.

"It was my first turtle flight," Santos said with a wry grin. "Maybe he didn't like the pilot."

The loggerhead and two somewhat smaller Kemp's Ridley turtles arrived in Mount Pleasant Wednesday after taking off with Santos in Biddleford, Maine.

The loggerhead was on its way to the South Carolina Aquarium, the others to a Georgia sea turtle hospital, to continue treatment after they were stunned by cold waters in the North Atlantic last year.

They need longer rehabilitation, and the sea turtle hospital in Maine needed to make room for a new season of distressed sea creatures.

The loggerhead must finish growing back some bone and scutes, or plates on its shell, after the scutes died and shed as a complication from the stunning. He could be released as early as next spring.

"Most everything that was wrong with (the loggerhead) has been corrected," said aquarium veterinarian Shane Boylan. "He had a pretty significant infectious disease. We'll keep an eye on him."

"Cold stuns" are an endemic problem for sea turtles when weather changes water temperature too fast for them to move farther south. They become lethargic and eventually can quit moving or die.

The Kemp's Ridleys are an endangered species; the loggerhead is a threatened species.

The pilot's association, fans of the aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital through a connection with the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's Island turtle watch group, took on the trip when asked by Kelly Thorvalson, the aquarium's turtle rescue coordinator.

A six-hour plane ride was a lot healthier than a 25-hour car ride for a sick and stressed turtle cramped in a box.

Santos wanted to visit family in New England anyway. He paid much of the $1,800 fuel cost; the association chipped in the rest. He flew the odd Angel Flight because it made him feel good, Santos said. If everyone does a little good, he said, it goes a long way.

Going a long way was the least of the difficulties with this trip.

"Oh, it was a nightmare," said a laughing Nicholas Johannes, the association member who worked with Thorvalson. "We have tiny little airplanes." The plane's seats had to come out, and the big box holding the loggerhead had to be cut down to size.

The Kemp's Ridleys had to be loaded in back, one of the boxes jammed through a hatch door so tight that as Santos struggled to get the box out, he said to himself, "I know he fit in here."

Also, the temperature in the plane had to be kept at 70 degrees for the recovering reptiles.

"A sea turtle has a certain smell to it, sort of like a dead fish," Johannes said. "Nobody told Ronnie."

Reach Bo Petersenat 937-5744 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.