Ocean Sentry
Don Heacock has two words for ocean boaters in areas known to be frequented by sea turtles: “speed kills.” Speeding boats and their razor-sharp propellers are responsible for four or five “vessel-related turtle deaths this year” in Kaua‘i waters, said Heacock, aquatic biologist with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Resources. That number nearly increased by one last week when a female green sea turtle found injured and bleeding in waist-deep water off the U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands was rescued by humans.
Her injuries are consistent with contact with a boat propellor, Heacock said.
The turtle, weighing in excess of 300 pounds, was sent to O‘ahu, endured around three hours of surgery to repair her cracked shell, or carapace, and other injuries, and released back into the wild last week, said Heacock.
Sea turtles, which rest and bask on the ocean’s surface, are regularly seen in shoreline areas where coral, reefs and rocks provide ample food sources and shelter from their main predators, tiger sharks, Heacock said.
“Remember, these are shoreline animals. The moral of this story is speed kills,” and boats going too fast to be able to avoid these creatures likely caused the deaths and injury, he said.
The turtle suffered one propeller strike near the middle of her carapace and the most-damaging blow was nearer to the bottom of her shell, near her pelvis, which severed the top of the carapace and cut through the turtle’s spinal column.
When rescuers reached her she was bleeding and had they not brought her quickly to shore she likely would have become a meal for tiger sharks, who can detect blood in the water from 10 miles away, Heacock said.
(From kauaiworld.com, Kauaʻi, Hawaiian Islands, by Paul Curtis)
