Turtle Rescue

Hello Tern Followers! This is Jimmy.  Sorry its been a while since we updated.  The internet has been coming and going with the wind lately, but we finally got a chance to make another post.  We have been very busy lately trying to finish all our albatross sweeps before the peak of hatching.  We seem to have completed the sweeps just in time as a lot of the eggs have hatched and the proud parents are extremely protective (and snappy) over their chicks.  

A few days ago the waves on the north side of the island were huge; huge enough that when the same swell made it to Oahu a day later, they were planning on holding one of the premier big wave competitions on the North Shore. The waves are just starting to settle down now.  Anyways, this relates to the turtle rescue because the rough waters cause the juvenile turtles to seek shelter from the strong currents and choppy shallows that they usually hang out in.  Unfortunately, the gaps in our seawall provide an appealing place for them to escape, and then they get trapped in small pools just inside the wall when the tide goes out.  Since this happens fairly often, the volunteers always check these pools during the daily entrapment walk.  Kristina and I were scheduled for the entrapment walk this morning and were excited to rescue two unlucky turtles sitting at the bottom of the shallow pools just inside the seawall.  Kristina took a video while I attempted to catch the first of the two turtles.  Turtles are very quick when they are in the water so we had to corral them into a very shallow section before we could try to pick them up.  We took a few pictures of us holding the turtles and putting them back through the hole in the seawall after checking them for identifying marks and injuries.

Green Sea Turtle inside the seawall