Featured Image Credit: Dave Munday
By Jessica Kittel
The South Carolina Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Care Center just got a whole lot snazzier. Thanks to a donation by Mercedes-Benz Vans LLC, sea turtles will now return to the ocean in a fire engine red Sprinter Utility van, complete with flashing lights. This unique custom van was painstakingly assembled in the new North Charleston Mercedes-Benz plant.
The inside of this van can accommodate a 500-pound turtle and is tall enough for volunteers and aquarium employees to stand up in. One necessary feature was four-wheel drive, allowing the van to deftly drive on the beaches where the rescues and releases take place.
This turtle-mobile was broken in with its first passenger Cove, a green sea turtle, three months ago. Sully, a loggerhead sea turtle, found on Sullivan’s island, followed Cove.
As stated by a Mercedes-Benz representative “When Mercedes-Benz Vans LLC was presented with the opportunity to support the Sea Turtle Care Center, we knew we could do so in a very unique way, by providing a high-quality means of transportation for rescued and rehabilitated sea turtles in a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. Our vans are built with customization in mind, and this van was built with the highly important goal of protecting our local environment through sea turtle care.”
Watch the South Carolina Aquarium’s exciting first release of the season— featuring the cool new van— below!