Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I've Got a Line on a Sea Turtle


The other day there was a customer on the boat who had a great deal of trouble descending. She was pressing both the dump and inflate buttons on her BC's power inflator at the same time. This is not a posting about proper training or the importance of familiarity with one's gear, though I suppose it could be had something far more interesting not happened only a few moments later.

I called up to the boat with the shout of lazy Divemasters everywhere, "MORE WEIGHT!" and stuffed a couple of 2lb-ers into her pockets to overcome that initial five feet of descent. Once underwater, she dived like a champ and I was happy to see that my having overweighted her didn't result in constant coral crashing, or any coral crashing, for that matter. Nor is this a posting about responsible Divemastering. Not really.

We had been on the surface for about 10 minutes mucking about and by the time we'd dropped down the anchor line and established both neutral buoyancy and happiness the group had gone on its way to explore a lava tube. We set off in their direction and after only a few minutes came upon them making their way back to the boat.

"There's a turtle over there," the other DM that day motioned to me and, checking to ensure that both my diver and I had enough gas, we set off in that direction to look for him. Not that we really had to see another turtle. Instead of spotting one rarely and briefly, as is often the case in the Caribbean, in Hawaii it is rarer to NOT see a sea turtle during a dive. They seem to love these waters and to spot one napping on the bottom or happily munching away on sponge is a fairly regular sight.

Sadly, another fairly regular sight is what we saw next.

The big, male, Green Sea Turtle came flapping his way through the water straight towards us... with monofilament fishing line wrapped around his right, front flipper and trailing out 10 - 15 feet behind him.

I turned to my diver and motioned that she should stay right where she was and she gave me an OK to indicate that she understood. Dropping a few feet in the water column to be right at his level, I slowly kicked towards the turtle just to put a little space between myself and the other diver. The turtle didn't seem to care much and didn't change course at all; we were swimming right at one another.

As slowly as I could and with body language that I was hoping beyond hope spoke, "I mean you no harm" in Turtle I pulled my z-knife from my belt.

When the turtle was about two feet away he started to bank to the left to avoid collision. It was perfect, exposing his right flipper completely to me. He obviously didn't like that I started to reach for him as he started to fin just the slightest bit faster. But I'm good with a z-knife.

In just a few seconds I'd cut much of the line away, including the length that was trailing behind him.

He gave a good, strong flap and was clear of my reach a moment after that. There was a bit more line on him, but I didn't want to make him uncomfortable by chasing him. My chances of catching him even if I tried were slim to none anyway. So I let him go on his way while I stuffed the plastic line into the pocket of my wetsuit. He gave me a last, essaying look over his shoulder as he resumed his previous, lazy pace. And he was gone.

When I pulled the line out of my pocket back on the dive boat everyone knew immediately where it had come from.

"You got it off!!" a kid diving with his parents exclaimed happily.

"Yep," I did. It was a good day.

Now knowing the abundance of sea turtles in these waters, my dive briefing very quickly gained a good segment on respectful behaviour around turtles. Don't touch them, don't chase them, try not to block their immediate access to the surface, etc. The turtles may be better than us in the water, but no one is better than us at coming into an foreign environment and making things uncomfortable for the locals. So, constantly giving a briefing like this, obviously I don't advocate everyone swimming around, chasing turtles, trying to "help" them.

That this particular turtle allowed me to approach him as closely as he did, and that when I reached for him with my knife hand wasn't gone like a shot was a fluke (no pun intended) and a very lucky one at that.

That said, the number of turtles I'm seeing with fishing line wrapped around them somehow or -- far worse -- with hooks in their flippers or their necks is making me crazy and I was happy to finally do something about it. I don't know any simple solution and am open to suggestions.

In the meantime I am going to wish and dream that I get a chance like that at least once more in my life to make a direct difference beyond the education about these sweet animals I try to offer my divers.

If you'd like more information on the challenges that sea turtles face globally check out the sight The Sea Turtle Restoration Project. It's an excellent organization that does a lot of good work for these endangered animals.

And come to Hawaii. See some turtles. They're cute as hell.


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