In the Florida Keys, saviors for the sea turtles : The effort to rescue a species gripped by a mysterious plague has become a costly obsession for one couple--but a rewarding one.

The patient arrived in a panel truck, agitated, bewildered and using her flippers to whack the sides of the plastic swimming pool that held her. She looked terrible. At least 25 bulbous tumors stuck up from around her eyes, mouth and the leathery skin around her shell.

“Actually,” said Richie Moretti, flipping the 60-pound green sea turtle over on her back, “this one is pretty healthy. I think she might be in the 15% we can save.”

Moretti, 48, is a former Volkswagen mechanic who moved to the Florida Keys nine years ago after buying a motel next door to a topless lounge. Moretti still runs the Hidden Harbor Motel, but the lounge, called Fanny’s, has been converted into what is believed to be the world’s only veterinary clinic devoted exclusively to treating endangered sea turtles plagued by a mysterious and debilitating disease.

The disease, called fibropapilloma, causes grotesque tumor masses that are not malignant but usually prove fatal when they grow over the animal’s eyes and mouth and hinder feeding. “They literally starve to death,” Moretti said.

Up to 60% of some green turtle populations found in the Florida Keys and areas of the Caribbean are believed to be affected, according to Elliott Jacobson, a professor of zoological medicine at the University of Florida who is working with Moretti and his partner, Tina Brown. Turtles in Hawaii have also been affected, and the disease is beginning to show up the warm waters of Central America and Australia.

The disease was first reported in 1938, but in the last few years it has “increased in prevalence and distribution, and we don’t know why,” Jacobson said. His studies found that papilloma is related to the herpes virus.

“It is a devastating, life-threatening problem which could knock out whole populations,” he added. “We’re seeing it primarily in juveniles, and when they become breeding adults at 15 to 20 years old, they could pass it on through the egg.”

For Moretti and Brown, who moved to the Middle Keys from Orlando seven years ago, the turtles have become a costly obsession. “Our plan was to compete in fishing tournaments and take it easy,” Moretti said.

Instead, the two have poured the proceeds from the 21-unit motel and a couple of video rental stores into the nonprofit turtle project. Moretti figures he has spent about $250,000 to buy the former lounge, remodel it and install operating tables, lights, a sterilizer and an anesthesia machine.

The clinic officially opened in June. But Moretti and Brown say they have treated more than 350 diseased or damaged animals since 1985, when a fisherman brought the first injured turtle to them.

Of the dozens with papilloma, most have died, so underweight when found that no amount of tube-fed Gatorade and Nutri-Cal could save them.

The one arriving in the panel truck could be an exception.

Brown turned on the garden hose near the marina and scraped from the animal’s shell masses of yellow eggs laid by marine leeches. Moretti readied a shot of antibiotic. Days later, when the turtle is accustomed to her new surroundings in a salt-water swimming pool, a veterinarian will come by to surgically remove the tumors.

This turtle faces at least six months of rehabilitation, Brown said.

Fibropapilloma isn’t all sea turtles have to contend with. Collisions with boats and propellers are also frequent.

Moretti and Brown have learned to use fiberglass to make repairs to cracked shells and how to sew up flesh wounds vulnerable to infection.

This turtle also had a deep gash on one flipper and cracks and a dash of blue paint on its shell, evidence of a run-in with a boat hull.

Brown and Moretti have been lauded for their work by the National Marine Fisheries Service, and they were mentioned in a recent issue of National Geographic magazine.

Their work with the turtles has led them to environmental activism; they have gone to sea to protest the military’s use of the Atlantic as a practice bombing range and have sued the Commerce Department to halt the harvesting of sea grass--prime turtle habitat--in the Sargasso Sea. Some seaweed is used as protein in animal food.

Jacobson, the marine biologist, said that while battling long odds in trying to save individual turtles, Brown and Moretti have been effective in calling attention to a little-noticed plague.

“Government agencies have avoided these kinds of problems, and so it’s left to the private sector to provide humane care of these animals,” he said. “This is a global disease, a forecaster of other problems in the marine environment. People concerned with the quality of life should be concerned about what’s happening with green turtles.”

For Brown, a former hairdresser, working with troubled turtles now seems inevitable. “Living here in the Keys, it is impossible to ignore nature, and turtles are a part of it,” she said. “Nobody else was doing anything, so we did.”

Moretti recalls winning the first two deep-sea fishing tournaments the couple entered, in 1984. “That was satisfying but lightweight compared to fixing sick animals and returning them to the wild,” he said.

“I like being needed, and these animals need us. If I could think of any way to enjoy life more, I’d do it.”