Long before she was named Lola, a baby sea turtle was discovered stuck in wet sand on Mustang Island, Texas. A mauled flipper waggled feebly in the air. She was a mere hatchling, perhaps 3 months old, weight: 7 ounces. That was July 27, 2002. Lola’s hardluck debut.
“Kemp’s ridley LK0-112 was found in very weak condition, half buried,’’ Tony Amos recorded at the Animal Rehabilitation Keep, or ARK, in nearby Port Aransas, Texas. He’s a famed wildlife rehabilitator and director of the center, dedicated to restoring injured marine animals to health and the wild.
“The right front [flipper] had been partially bitten off by fish,’’ Amos said of the turtle.
The Kemp’s ridley is smallest, rarest, and most critically-endangered of sea turtle species. The foundling turtle spent 11 months at the rehab center. A biopsy was taken for DNA analysis and a “pit tag’’ — passive integrated transponder, about the size of a rice grain — was embedded under her skin, It carried the electronic code: 4232592D51. That remains the turtle’s official ID, although it was forgotten for years.
On June 4, 2003, the turtle was shipped aboard the Longhorn along with two loggerheads and a hawksbill so hoary that clusters of barnacles had to be scraped from its shell. The 103-foot research vessel chugged 8 miles to sea, where the turtles were loosed into their native Gulf of Mexico.
Bad luck: The next day, the little Kemp’s ridley was found at “pole 12’’ on Mustang Island. Her right flipper was horribly entangled with fishing line, by some accounts. Commercial fishing gear — marine rope, shrimp nets, crab traps — takes a devastating toll on sea turtles. She was brought back to the ARK center and nicknamed R2D2 — not for the Star Wars robot but because she had “Returned Twice’’ and “D2’’ was already part of her transponder code.
The flipper would eventually be amputated.
On Oct. 15, 2003, the turtle was transferred to winter quarters at Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi. Because of the missing flipper, plus bowel injuries and a damaged spine, she was pronounced “unable to dive and unreleasable.’’ In short, rehabilitators had abandoned hope of ever reestablishing her in the wild.
At about this time — accounts vary — the turtle was given the name Lola, apparently for benefit of the visitors to the aquarium. People like a people name.
On Aug. 20, 2004, Lola was transferred to the Dallas World Aquarium. She weighed 8 pounds. Records and interviews indicate that by this point, Lola’s caretakers had lost track of her pit tag number, snapping a key thread of her history.
On April 12, 2008, Lola was moved to the Key West Aquarium. She weighed a healthy 55 pounds. For the next eight years, she swam dismal circles and loops in her tank, unevenly powered by her good left flipper. She often bumped into the tank’s side — not hard enough to hurt, perhaps, but always a reminder of her useless right stump.
In the fall of 2015, three engineering undergraduates at Worcester Polytechnic Institute contacted the aquarium offering to design and build a prosthetic flipper for Lola, using 3-D printer technology. They’d been brushed off by other turtle rehab centers. But aquarium veterinarian Douglas Mader, who is certified to treat reptiles and zoo animals as well as standard house pets, was enthusiastic and the Key West facility agreed to cooperate with the long-shot project.
“That’s how things go forward,’’ Mader said. “You take a chance.’’
Students Vivian Liang, Samantha Varela, and Iok Wong spent the academic year feverishly researching, designing and building a “hydrodynamic biomimetic’’ flipper that closely resembled a natural one in terms of feel and performance — it generates “lift and drag’’ forces needed by a sea turtle.
On Sept. 6, Lola — now weighing 62 pounds and measuring 3 feet long by 2½ feet wide at the shell — was successfully fitted with the first-of-its-kind artificial appendage. She was soon flippering about with increasing dexterity and unmistakable glee, her caretakers say.
On Oct. 19, Mader, partly at a request of the Globe, scanned Lola’s nearly-forgotten “pit tag’’ — the number 4232592D51 confirms that Lola is the exact hatchling first rescued by Tony Amos in Texas more than 14 years earlier.
“It brings the circle around,’’ said Greg Gerwin, curator for the Key West Aquarium.
Colin Nickerson can be reached at nickerson.colin@ gmail.com.
