The world according to me....

Yesterday was a blustery day in eastern North Carolina. I received a call from NC Marine Patrol: someone had reported a dead loggerhead underneath the Triple "S" Pier on Atlantic Beach. Atlantic Beach is not far from my house, so it was a quick drive over the causeway to Bogue Banks. The ocean was quite turbulent due to heavy winds and there was so much sand being blown around that I couldn't see the turtle until I ducked under the pier (the photo above is how it looked). This was a juvenile loggerhead that died relatively recently, although cooler water and air temperatures mean that decomposition is slower than in the summer, making it difficult to definitively pinpoint how long it had been dead. The turtle had neither flipper tags nor a PIT tag. I couldnt' tell what sex it was because the gonads and other internal organs were gone (likely eaten by other animals in the sea and/or on the beach). The carapace was severely damaged - it looked like the result of a boat strike to me (note the jagged cracks below the gaping hole on the carapace the photo below). Of course, it isn't known of the boat strike was before or after the turtle had died.

The final thing I did was spray-paint it (so it wouldn't be recounted if it was somehow seen again) and bury it further up the beach (about 4 feet below the surface of the sand). Now it is just another datapoint in our strandings database (350 observed stranded turtles to date in NC in 2005).