The world according to me....

This is pretty much what it seems: several people working together to free a leatherback that had been accidentally tangled in a small gillnet set close to shore. It was just a matter of cutting the remaining line wrapped around her flipper before she was able to swim away freely.

However, there is some background to this. To begin with, this turtle was originally 30-40 meters off shore when she was spotted by some beach tourists, who then alerted us. Stephanie Kamel and I decided we should swim out to see what we could do. Fortunately, Stephanie is an olympic-type swimmer, because once we got out there, I was having trouble keeping my head above water, let alone deal with an entangled leatherback. Somehow, after about 20 minutes of struggling, Stephanie dragged both the turtle and me back to shore. There, in the shallows, as much as we tried to unwrap the line from the turtle, she kept swatting her flippers and re-entangling herself. Finally, the tourists who had been watching plus Christophe (another turtle worker) jumped in to try to keep the turtle calm while we worked to cut the ropes and lines. In the end, the turtle was freed and she swam away energetically.

From then on, I learned to either take a boat out or wait for the tide to fall before trying to free an entangled leatherback. It was invariably better for all parties involved. I remember once waiting until low tide to free a leatherback that had been wrapped in a boat line for several hours, upon which she proceeded to haul out onto the beach and start preparing the sand for a nest cavity. It is hard to compete with that kind of dedication.

Thanks to N. Mrosovsky for taking the photo.