Last night I saw my first leatherback of the season, but unfortunately she was dead. As I was making my first pass south along the beach, I saw the unmistakable shape of a leatherback in the surf. She was facing to the south and I watched her for a bit before realizing that she was not moving. When I got closer I immediately knew what had happened. There were three or four long slices in her carapace from a large boat propeller. I checked her tags and was really bummed when I found that she did indeed have two flipper tags and a PIT tag. The numbers were ours, I checked our database to find out the turtle was named "Daisy" Daisy was seen only once on Juno Beach during the 2004 season. She was spotted nesting on 6-23-04 and was actually the last turtle that was spotted that season.
The tide has now taken Daisy back out to sea and sadly, it really does look as if she wants to keep swimming.
This is the second tagged turtle to wash up in the past 24 hours! Dean Bagley's turtle on Tuesday morning was first observed nesting on Melbourne Beach in 2005.
Oh yeah, there were two nests in our survey area last night!! I was unable to reach one of the turtles due to the recent beach erosion, and I missed the other one while being tied up with some police activity on the beach.
I bet there will be another one tonight and hopefully we will see her. Night night.
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