The world according to me....

Yesterday, I was out on Core Sound with some fishermen who were checking their pound nets and also with Lisa Goshe of NMFS-Beaufort and Hope Valentine of NCSU College of Veterinary Medicine. This trip was part of the regularly scheduled sampling of juvenile loggerheads that are passively captured in pound nets in inshore waters of North Carolina. It is one of my favorite things to do, because not only I get to work with fishermen and see live turtles but also there is always something new or different that happens. In the case of yesterday's trip, the different experience was seeing a large male loggerhead (identified by the long tail that extended well beyond the carapace - see photo above). Up until now, when out visiting pound nets I have seen only smaller juvenile loggerheads that may have been male or female - they hadn't developed any sexually dimorphic external characters. This particular turtle was rather large and it took three of us to haul it into the boat. Surprisingly, he was a relatively docile loggerhead and there was no accidental nipping at anyone's toes or legs. When our sampling was finished, he just quietly slipped back into the water and likely made his way back to the same pound net!