Toronto aquarium welcomes new endangered animal

The Dangerous Lagoon at Ripley's Aquarium of Canada in Toronto can be seen above. (Ripley's Aquarium of Canada/Facebook)

Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in downtown Toronto welcomed a new endangered resident to its largest exhibit this week.

Schoona, a “whopping” 130 kg green sea turtle, was transferred last week from the Vancouver Aquarium, where she’s lived since 2005, the facility said in a statement issued Monday.

Schoona will join Spot and Chewy - two Green Sea Turtles already housed at the aquarium – and can be found in the Dangerous Lagoon, the facility's largest exhibit.

The reptile was transported under the care of an Air Canada animal transport team in a “temperature-controlled cargo hold on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner,” the statement said.

“We’re so happy that Schoona is with us and is doing so well,” Peter Doyle, general manager at Ripley’s Aquarium, said in the written statement.

“Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada is proud to be able to provide world class care for these turtles and continue to help teach curious visitors about what we need to do to help them thrive,” he said.

Schoona is named after Schooner’s Pass in British Columbia, the release states. She was found in “cold shock, unable to find her way back to her natural range,” it said. 

Green Sea Turtles were first internationally classified as endangered, and facing a very high risk of extinction in the wild in the near future, in 1982 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, according to Sea Turtle Conservancy, an advocacy group dedicated to the research and protection of the species.

In the U.S., the species was recategorized from endangered to threatened under the U.S. Federal Endangered Species Act in April 2016. It were originally listed as endangered in 1978. 

 

 

 

 

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