Turtle Hospital and Dolphin Research Center - Marathon, FL

Despite the stressful drive through downtown Miami, we made it safe and sound to Marathon yesterday afternoon.

For several years, we've been interested in visiting the Turtle Hospital and the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon but always managed to miss them because we were either on our way to Key West or making our way back north from Key West. So this time around we decided to stop over in Marathon for a couple nights on our way to Key West.

We've been staying at the Marathon Coast Guard Station and it's OK, but not great. With the clarity of hindsight, it would have made more sense to go on to Key West and then drive back up to Marathon in the car. However to approach it, the bottom line is that we really enjoyed both the the Turtle Hospital and the Dolphin Research Center.

We went to the Turtle Hospital this morning and spent a couple hours there. They did an excellent job taking our group around the facility to visit various sick and recovering turtles, and educating us about various turtle species and man-made environmental impacts that threaten these marine animals.

It was also fascinating to learn how they nurse the turtles back to health, and the various types of tricky surgeries veterinarians and medical technicians routinely perform to save lives.

After the Turtle Hospital, we drove about 15 minutes to the Dolphin Research Center (DRC) on Grassy Key. We enjoyed this experience also. The Center is larger and more commercialized than the Turtle Hospital, but is still very focused on its mission as an education and research facility. In addition to Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins (of Flipper fame), the Center is also home to several California sea lions. These sea lions were either born at the facility, or were rescued and then deemed unreleasable and now have a forever home at the Center.

The Dolphin Research Center is the only state and federal government authorized Manatee Rescue Team in the Florida Keys. In this role, the facility may provide short-term (48 hour) rehabilitation or holding for manatees but they more typically transport injured and distressed manatees to designated rehabilitation facilities.

Visitors to the Dolphin Research Center can sign up for various tours in addition to general admission. We just went with the general admission and still found lots of interesting things to see, such as trainers working with the dolphins and demonstrating their intelligence.