Disappointment categorised last year's summer turtle tagging project when one of the very first green turtles captured was found to have a deadly turtle disease never before seen in Bermuda.

The Bermuda Turtle Project aims to promote the conservation of marine turtles through research and education. Through an annual summer tag and release project involving scientists and interns from around the world, the team has collected a great deal of valuable information about Bermuda's turtle population. This year the news on the population wasn't so good.

"After 30 years of collecting and tagging turtles with the Bermuda Turtle Project, there have been no sightings of fibropapillomatosis chelonid (FP) associated herpes virus in sea turtles" said Dr. Ian Walker, curator of the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo (BAMZA). "This summer, on their first collection, they pulled out a turtle with the disease.

"The animal had been tagged the year before, so we know it had been in Bermuda waters for at least a year. It was noted on its record that there was plaque on the skin that didn't remind anyone of anything, but it was an interesting note. That was probably the start of the disease, but we don't know for sure. The only way to diagnose it is to biopsy it."

The sick turtle was taken to Endsmeet Animal Hospital to keep it from infecting turtles at BAMZ. The sad decision was made to euthanise it. Dr. Walker did a biopsy on the turtle, and called various turtle experts.

"Sea turtle FP has been found in the Caribbean, Hawaii, but never here," said Dr. Walker. "So we called the right people and sent off the biopsy to Dr. Lawrence Herbst, director of the Animal Institute at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York."

Unfortunately, Dr. Herbst found that all the samples sent to him were positive for FP. Scientists also found that the virus was the same or very similar to the one found on the east coast of Florida.

"So the likelihood is the turtle contracted it somewhere around Florida or the Bahamas and then came up in the Gulf Stream," said Dr. Walker. The disease usually starts in the corner of the turtle's eyes, and then manifests itself in large skin tumours, and also internal tumours that can compress the lungs and cause organ failure.

"Typically, what will happen is if you get large tumours over the eyes, the animal will be unable to see and will be thin because it can't forage for food," said Dr. Walker. "It is also subject to prey because it can't see things. Also, large tumours on their flippers can hamper their movement."

Finding the sick turtle in the first catch or set, was a stroke of luck for the Bermuda Turtle Project. It allowed those involved to be on the look out for signs of disease in other captured turtles.

"It is not really known how FP is passed on," said Dr. Walker. "In Hawaii, they have done studies where they have taken saddle back wrasses, a fish that clean sea turtles, and they have found the virus in their liver, gills and mouth. So one possibility is that this fish could be a vector. It could also be passed on during mating, but this turtle with the disease was a juvenile, as are all the green sea turtles in Bermuda waters."

Dr. Walker said given the prevalence of the disease in the Caribbean, it's actually surprising it hasn't been spotted in Bermuda before now.

"Animals that have this disease may be compromised and not able to make the journey from the Caribbean to Bermuda," he said. "An animal that just got it, could possibly make it here. What we don't want to see is the epidemic that is going through the Caribbean and Hawaii."

He said epidemics run their course, and some animals will be very suspectible and will succumb to it rapidly. Fifty percent of the green sea turtles in Hawaii and the Caribbean are affected by the disease. It is not really known if the disease could transfer to other species, but it is thought that it probably transfers to other species of sea turtles.

"In Florida, the authorities have basically gone into a management holding pattern," said Dr. Walker. "The veterinarians I talked to in Florida said if they get turtles with the disease they will take them in, run various tests, x-ray them to see if there are tumours inside them, and see if there are any other problems with these animals.

"If there are no tumours inside them and their skin tumours are fairly small in size, they will excise them in a really wide margin. If there is no reoccurrence, they will release them.

"There is no way you want to be killing fifty percent of the population. That would have a dire affect on the sea turtle population. So that is their management style right now. We elected, because this was the first one, to humanely euthanise it and hope we don't see another one."

He said finding the diseased turtle highlighted why the work of the Bermuda Turtle Project was so important, especially in terms of surveillance.

"The people I spoke to in the United States are very interested in the fact that we have a native population of turtles here," he said.

"We have had so much historical data saying we are most likely clear of this disease until this summer. What happens now is quite interesting. We will be looking to see if the disease takes off in our population or whether it will be a one-off event."