I took my first really long walk on the beach this morning since my ankle injury this summer. It was such a joy to be barefoot on the sand again with no pain at all! Bliss...
The ocean was my favorite shade of Coke-bottle-aqua. I saw a flock silvery-white sea gulls I had never seen before on our beaches with vibrant orange, long sharp beaks and funky dark Mohawk hairstyles. I saw this elaborate sand castle surrounded with a moat of sea rocks and coral that made me feel like I was in a fairytale.
I also saw a dead pelican amidst long strands of discarded fishing line, weights and hooks, crumpled plastic water bottles and broken styrofoam. I saw a dead juvenile green sea turtle with all its flippers missing lying in the surf. Heartbreaking....
A dear friend from our Marinelife Center arrived after I reached her by cell phone to take the sea turtle back to the hospital for further evaluation on its cause of death. These beautiful creatures are highly endangered. Based on what we saw, it did not appear that a natural ocean predator had killed it. I will spare you the sad photos I took out of respect for the turtle's brief life....
Please (please) keep praying your OceanPrayers.
3 comments:
Special thanks to Tom on Facebook who identified the birds described in my blog post as Royal Terns. They are so cool....
Here is the link to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tern
I DO love the new look. And I must say I love reading your voice along with your photos. I'm not even going to tell my family about the dead sea turtle. Why? Why? xoxo
Thanks, Deborah. I get in the quick, lazy habit of just zapping photos to my blog with my iPhone and my goal is to add much more commentary this year. So glad you noticed and liked it.
Regarding the little sea turtle, I just don't know...People are mostly careless, I think (I hope), especially the tourist-type sports fishermen who go out and don't know what they are doing. We see a lot of sea turtle deaths caused when they get hooked on a line and the fisherman panics and cuts the line rather than stopping to bring the injured turtle to the hospital for hook removal and rehabilitation. But sometimes, people are just cruel and heartless. I am hoping this was just an accident but we'll wait and see. We may never know.
Thanks so much for caring, too.
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