Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Center at Brevard Zoo — Melbourne, Florida

The Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Center is a behind-the-scenes wildlife care facility at Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, operated by the East Coast Zoological Foundation (ECZF), the nonprofit that runs the zoo. According to Brevard Zoo, ECZF opened the center in April 2014, and it now sees about 100 sea turtle patients each year. The building is not open to the public; turtles arrive from the beaches and lagoon waters of Brevard County, receive veterinary care, and, when possible, go back to the sea.

The zoo frames the center around local geography. Brevard Zoo describes the beaches of Brevard County as among the world's most important nesting areas for sea turtles and the largest in the United States. The county's southern beaches include the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says stretches 20.5 miles between Melbourne Beach and Wabasso Beach and was designated to protect the most significant loggerhead nesting area in the world. A turtle population that large, sharing water with boats and anglers off Melbourne, produces a steady flow of injured animals.

Brevard Zoo lists two separate holding facilities with a combined 14 tanks, ranging from six to 12 feet in diameter. The split matters because of one disease in particular. The center was designed to take turtles with fibropapillomatosis, known as FP, a virus that produces tumors inside and outside a turtle's body. FP-positive and FP-negative turtles must be housed apart, and the zoo says that requirement makes its Melbourne center one of just a few facilities able to accept FP turtles.

A Brevard Zoo blog post on FP explains why the disease shows up so often here. It describes FP as fairly common in the Indian River Lagoon, links it to water pollution and warmer temperatures, and notes a particular risk for green sea turtles because of their habitat and seagrass diet. A typical FP patient stays at the zoo for seven to eight months. When a turtle is a good surgical candidate, the zoo veterinary staff remove the tumors with a carbon dioxide laser, and the blog says the facility is one of only six rehabilitation centers in Florida able to perform that operation. Staff check blood values before deciding to operate, since the tumors carry a large blood supply.

The zoo lists three broad reasons a turtle ends up in a Melbourne tank: recovery from a boat strike, interaction with human debris such as fishing line or plastic, and general debilitation. Care combines rest, medication, surgery and nutrition, delivered by veterinary staff and volunteers, with the aim of returning each turtle to the water.

Fishing gear dominates the 2026 case files. In an August 15, 2026 post, the zoo reported that three loggerheads had arrived over a few months after injuries from derelict fishing gear. One, a 140-pound loggerhead found stranded in the Indian River Lagoon in May 2026, had about 18 fishing hooks in her digestive tract; Orlando Health Melbourne Hospital lent specialized equipment in an attempt to remove them. Another, a 210-pound adult loggerhead carrying eggs, came in over the July Fourth weekend wrapped in braided fishing line. Neither could be returned to the ocean.

Other patients arrive from farther along the Space Coast. The zoo reported in September 2026 that a juvenile green turtle named Bowtie was brought in after being hooked at Jetty Pier Park in Port Canaveral, had hooks removed from its neck and esophagus, and was released from Lori Wilson Park in Cocoa Beach on Sept. 16, 2026. The zoo describes derelict fishing gear as one of the biggest threats facing sea turtles today.

Releases are public events announced on the zoo blog and held at beach parks. On Oct. 6, 2026, Brevard Zoo announced a double release set for Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, at 12:30 p.m. from Howard E. Futch Memorial Park at Paradise Beach, on the Melbourne oceanfront. Rain does not cancel a release, but lightning in the area can delay or call one off.

The two turtles in that release show the range of cases the center handles. Julian, a juvenile green sea turtle, was brought in by the Sea Turtle Preservation Society in October 2025 after stranding on Satellite Beach and needed close to a year of care for a bone infection in a flipper, parasites, shell wounds and abnormal blood chemistry. Falafel, a sub-adult loggerhead, was brought in by Coastal Connections, Inc. in June 2026 with recreational cast-net line wrapped around its left front flipper. The flipper had to be surgically removed, and the zoo's veterinary team stated that sea turtles commonly live in the ocean on three flippers. Both cases began in Brevard waters and ended at a Melbourne beach.

The zoo's June 2026 patient profile of Falafel gives a sense of what entanglement does. The loggerhead had been found struggling in the Indian River Lagoon tied to an abandoned cast net that weighed over ten pounds, about 10 percent of the turtle's body weight, pulling on one of the two front flippers it uses to swim, feed and surface for air. Brevard Zoo staff cut the line during the intake exam, then tried leech therapy to restore circulation before choosing amputation. Falafel was the fourth loggerhead patient the Melbourne center admitted in 2026, arriving on World Loggerhead Day, June 12.

Rescue and rehabilitation run on a statewide network. NOAA Fisheries formally established the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network in 1980 to document strandings from Maine to Texas, with participating local organizations responding to stranded turtles, collecting data and transporting sick and injured turtles to permitted rehabilitation facilities. In Florida, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission research institute coordinates the Florida Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network, and debilitated turtles are rescued and carried to facilities such as the one at Brevard Zoo.

In Brevard, the zoo directs reports of injured or entangled sea turtles to the Sea Turtle Preservation Society at 321-206-0646, and reports from elsewhere in Florida to the FWC Wildlife Alert Hotline at 1-888-404-FWCC. The zoo also asks anglers on piers from Port Canaveral to Melbourne to watch for turtles feeding near their lines. Turtle care is one of several Brevard Zoo conservation programs, which also include rehabilitation of orphaned Florida black bear cubs and a manatee rehabilitation center, and the turtle center receives support from Protect Wild Dolphins Alliance through the Protect Marine Wildlife specialty license plate program.