The world according to me....

When you find a dead turtle on the beach, one of the first questions asked is also one of the most difficult to answer: What was the cause of death? Although sometimes the cause is obvious (e.g. a billfish strike), oftentimes there is no clear external sign of cause of mortality. Opening the carcass and doing a rough necropsy can sometimes uncover the reason of death, such as an intestinal blockage. However, more often than not, there is no apparent anomaly visible in the body cavity. But how does that answer the original question?

In fact, it is often easier to say what did NOT kill the turtle. By process of elimination, you can usually identify a few likely causes of death. Although still ambiguous, it may be a start, particularly if you find several stranded turtles in similar conditions and similar circumstances around the same time and in the same area. By looking for similarities across cases, and looking for correlations with other external factors, it may be possible to identify the most likely agent(s) of mortality. All this is just more reason for starting and maintaining long-term databases on sea turtle stranding events.