The world according to me....

This is Christy, a juvenile loggerhead turtle that originally stranded as a live cold stunned turtle and was rehabilitated at the NEST-NC Aquariume at Roanoke Rehabilitation Center in Manteo, North Carolina. After Christy returned to health, she was released with a satellite tag, so that we could follow her movements after release. A few months after she was released, we received no more transmissions from her, and we weren't sure what had happened to her. Then, on this past Tuesday, we recevied word from the NMFS biologists working in Core Sound that they had found Christy passively captured in one of the pound nets. She was alive and well, but the antenna on the transmitter looked pretty bad. In fact, it was nearly sheared off, and unable to stand straight up:

This could be the reason why it had stopped transmitting information. They brought Christy back to Beaufort where we were able to remove the transmitter and any extra epoxy on the carapace, and then we released her on the ocean side of Atlantic Beach (that's Noella Gray from Duke University watching Christy enter the ocean). Interestingly, despite the fact that Noella has had experience with turtle projects in the Caribbean, this was her first time seeing a loggerhead.