Along Florida’s Atlantic shoreline, where sea turtles return each year to nest on sandy beaches, an unusual veterinary case has drawn attention.
Pennywise, a massive female loggerhead sea turtle weighing 137 kilograms (302 pounds), washed ashore battered and bruised. She had survived a boat strike—an all-too-common and avoidable injury—but her ordeal wasn’t over yet. As veterinarians rushed to assess the damage, they ran into an unexpected obstacle: she was too big for the medical machines.
A Long Road to the Right Machine
Staff at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach are no strangers to treating sea turtles, especially during Florida’s busy nesting season, which runs from March through October. But Pennywise presented an unusual challenge.
She was too large to fit their equipment.
They first tried a nearby human hospital—Jupiter Medical Center—but even their CT scanner, built for adult people, couldn’t handle the dimensions of a loggerhead this size.
So the team pivoted. They contacted the Palm Beach Equine Clinic in Wellington, a facility built to accommodate ungulates. There, Pennywise finally slid into a horse-sized CT machine.
“And, luckily, the horse-sized machine was big enough to fit this lady through,” Barron told The Associated Press.
The scan revealed a surprising and hopeful twist. Pennywise, it turned out, was pregnant.
“We hope we’ll be able to get her back out there into the wild as soon as possible so that she can lay those eggs,” Barron added.
Loggerhead turtles, listed as endangered, often lay multiple clutches in a single nesting season. Each clutch can contain dozens of eggs, making every reproductive opportunity vital to the species’ future.
A Preventable Wound But a Hopeful Prognosis
When Pennywise was discovered by the Inwater Research Group earlier in the week, she was floating aimlessly in the Atlantic. Her shell bore the unmistakable signs of blunt force trauma—likely from a boat propeller. But there were signs of healing too. The veterinary team estimated the injury occurred about a month earlier.
The CT images showed damage to bones surrounding the spinal cord, but, crucially, the nerves remained intact. Whew!
“Luckily, right now, her neurologic exam shows that all those nerves are intact. And that is a great sign for her,” Barron said. “We’re very excited about that and we’ll just be rechecking to make sure that we have no progression of the disease, and as soon as we feel like that wound is healed well enough, she can go back out into the wild.”
Pennywise is currently on powerful antibiotics and under close observation. If her condition continues to improve, she may return to the ocean in time to lay her eggs—an act that could tip the scales, however slightly, in favor of her struggling species.
But the story comes with a sobering reminder.
“This is a textbook case of a turtle returning to the area for mating and nesting season, only to fall victim to an entirely preventable boat-strike injury,” Barron said.
Florida wildlife officials urge boaters to slow down during nesting season, especially in the designated Sea Turtle Protection Zone—a mile-wide stretch of ocean just offshore where turtles surface to breathe, rest, or navigate toward their nesting beaches.
Loggerheads like Pennywise have traversed the oceans for over 100 million years. Their nesting patterns are deeply ingrained, drawing them back to the beaches of their birth. But that ancient rhythm now collides with modern hazards—chief among them, propellers and hulls.
Still, for Pennywise, hope floats. Her wound is healing. Her nerves are intact. And deep inside her, life is waiting to hatch.
