Former President Jimmy Carter, his wife Rosalynn and their family visited The Turtle Hospital, a rescue, rehabilitation and release facility in Marathon, Florida Keys, and helped release a rehabilitated loggerhead sea turtle during their annual post-Christmas vacation to the Keys.

After touring the hospital, the former president and his family joined the hospital's staff to release Salty, a 70-pound loggerhead turtle the hospital had been treating since October 2016, back into the Atlantic Ocean.

Salty was found floating six miles off Sombrero Reef and suffered from intestinal impaction and a lung infection. With the help of the turtle hospital and antibiotics, Salty was successfully nursed back to health.

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"The grandkids — we have one grandchild and 10 great grandchildren here — I think they really learned a lot [about] the future of the turtles to keep the ocean from getting too warm and to keep trash out of the ocean,” President Carter said.

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The mission of the turtle hospital is to rescue, rehabilitate and release sea turtles in good health to their ocean home. Opened in 1986, it has treated and released more than 2,000 injured sea turtles.