INDIALANTIC -- After spending several weeks at Walt Disney World, nine sea turtles were released back into the Atlantic Ocean Sunday morning.
The turtles washed up on the Brevard County shore in December 2007 during a red tide bloom.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, along with several other organizations, picked up the nine turtles -- as well as about a dozen others, which were released earlier in the year -- and nursed them back to health.
"Because we know so little about the toxins associated with red tide, we really just pay attention to them and their secondary infections -- whether or not they get any type of pnemounia, or anything like that -- so we're really watching. Just like you would a patient in the hospital, we're watching their bloodwork, we're watching their appetite, their behavior, and it's really a lot of TLC.," said Jane Davis, a spokeswoman for Disney's Living Seas research team.
About 40 other sea turtles did not survive the red tide toxins.
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