The world according to me....

This kind of scene is a familiar one in the months of September-December in North Carolina: investigating a dead sea turtle. In the present case, this is a large juvenile loggerhead that stranded alive (barely) in Carteret County but died while en route to the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rehabilitation and Rescue Center. Wendy Cluse (on the left) brought it to CMAST where she and Dr. Nosilla Elttut (on the right) investigated it more thoroughly. You can see how emaciated and leech-infested this turtle was (the brown patches are leech egg clusters). Wendy and Nosilla collected various samples for analyses and comparison with other thin sick stranded turtles found along the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia.