Larisa Avens

About this time last year, Joanne McNeill, Craig Harms, Matthew, and I had an encounter with the turtle pictured above. Some fishermen in North Carolina coat their fishing nets with tar, to keep the nets from rotting while in the water. The loggerhead pictured here had apparently had a very close encounter with a net that wasn’t quite dry before it was set and, as a result, the turtle ended up with a much darker complexion than is usual for this species. The turtle was brought back to shore and we then began contemplating how to clean it up.

After consultation with the Marathon turtle hospital, two cleaning solutions were proposed. The first, Dawn dishwashing detergent, was a fairly familiar option; dish soap is apparently used quite often to clean up wildlife caught in oil slicks. The second option was mayonnaise, which was a bit more unusual. Still, using mayonnaise was definitely preferable to introducing more detergent into the environment, so we gave it a try…

As you can see from the next image, the mayonnaise did a splendid job of removing tar from this loggerhead, as well as from several other tarred turtles we encountered that fall. For those who attempt to use this technique to clean turtles, take care when restraining them…not surprisingly, the turtles didn’t seem to care too much for the mayonnaise treatment and, also not surprisingly, greased turtles are quite difficult to hang on to.

Thanks to Matthew and Craig for the great photos!