Turtle With Fishing Line

I was going through some of my photos from Hawaii this year, playing with PSE and Paintshop Pro 9. In this pic, you can clearly see some fishing line coming out of this turtle's mouth. At the base of his neck, on the lower part where it meets the shell, it looks like blood. I didn't notice this at the time, probably because I took this picture when I was snorkeling, not diving. Not much time to stay down and notice all the details.

It got me wondering if this occurs a lot and if anyone has any idea of how to help a turtle like this. I can't imagine he'd let me get close enough, for long enough to cut the line.

This is not that uncommon here. The state has an agency called DLNR (Department of Land and Natural Resources) They have an Aquatics Division that is in charge of problems like this. Quite often they will not do anything about it. On rare occassions they have captured the turtle.

The turtles at some of the more frequented dive sites are somewhat tame around divers and can be approached. It is however against State and Federal Laws to harass them as they are a protected species. The problem arise for a diver with good intentions with the definition of "harass".

Some time ago I encountered a turtle with a stainless steel shark hook in one of its flippers at one of my dive sites. I went back the next day with a large pair of bolt cutters figuring I had one shot at cutting it in half before the turtle split. Then the hook would work its way out over time. Unfortunately the turtle was not there.

A few years back there was a small young Hawksbill Turtle at Molikini, also an endangered and protected species. It had monofilament line on one of its flippers that was choking it off. A friend of mine working on one of the charter boats got permission from the Feds to capture the turtle. He did so and dropped it off at the dock to a National Marine Fisheries Officer who in turn flew it to Oahu where a vet removed the line and saved the flipper. After a period of rehab on Oahu the turtle was flown back to Maui and released back at Molokini. It was a major production.

We have a lot of turtles off of Waikiki that have those tumors (or what ever they are called) hanging on them. I once watched a turtle that had a big one hanging off the back flipper at the cleaning station. Every time the fish would go to clean that area he would wack around with that flipper, so I'm guessing that it's pretty sensitive.

Turtleguy came home from work a couple of times telling me of a turtle that had large ones hanging over both eyes. So large that the poor thing was greatly sight impared and was looking concave.

I called the NMFS-SWFSC Honolulu laboratory, because I heard that the remove the tumors and then set the turtles out again. They said they do do it, if the turtle is found on land, not in open sea. They went on to say that if I get a picture of it and they found that it really needed the help, they would get us the permission to bring the animal in.

You can imagine, that we really went hunting for that turtle. Every time Turtleguy saw it after that he didn't have a camera with him because he was teaching a class and when I was there we just couldn't find the turtle.
It's been a couple of months since Turtleguy saw him last....I'm sure it starved to death or was eaten.

Lisa, there are numerous turtles here with those tumors on them. I understand it is a worldwide problem. I have seen no attempts here on Maui to catch the affected ones and remove the tumors. No doubt it is a virus of some kind.

Gilligan:

Lisa, there are numerous turtles here with those tumors on them. I understand it is a worldwide problem. I have seen no attempts here on Maui to catch the affected ones and remove the tumors. No doubt it is a virus of some kind.

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Yes, it is a global problem. When we used to regularly dive the west side we never saw a turtle that had tumors. I was pretty surprised to see how many had them when we started diving the south.
There is a number to call if you find a turtle in need. If anybody is interested they can PM me.