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In an accident that experts agree is a rare occurrence, a leatherback sea turtle became ensnared in a research buoy line in the ocean off Jennette’s Pier last weekend. When personnel arrived at the buoy on the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 21, they found the turtle dead.
The leatherback turtle is the largest sea turtle in the world, weighing up to 2,000 pounds pounds. (Listed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as an endangered species, it is highly migratory and, in spite of its size, feeds almost entirely on jellyfish.
WATCH: After recovering at N.C. Aquarium, 6 turtles return to the sea in Buxton
In an email to the Voice, Matthew Godfrey, Sea Turtle Biologist for the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, provided a timeline of events.
On the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 20, a call came into the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles (N.E.S.T.) hotline that a leatherback turtle appeared to be entangled in gear of some sort at Jennette’s Pier.
“The N.E.S.T. group contacted NC Division of Marine Fisheries, because it was possible that the entangling gear might be commercial fishing gear,” Godfrey wrote. It was late in the day, however, and according to Godfrey, “Based on weather conditions and the time of day [nearing sunset], the NC Division of Marine Fisheries did not launch any boats to inspect the turtle.”
The following morning, according to Godfrey, N.E.S.T. contacted the Coast Guard Station Oregon Inlet and a volunteer rode out to the site with the Coast Guard.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Jacob Bradley, who crewed the Coast Guard boat, agreed that his boat was larger than the Marine Fisheries vessel and said the decision to not try to go to the site late in the day under questionable weather conditions “was probably reasonable.”
When the Coast Guard arrived at the buoy, they found the turtle was dead and had been ensnared in a buoy line anchoring a Coastal Studies Institute (CSI) wave energy research buoy in place.
“The turtle had been dead for some time [more than 24 hours],” Godfrey wrote in the email. “They disentangled the turtle and left it floating, because weather conditions remained poor, and it was not possible to bring the carcass on board.”
It is unclear how the turtle became entangled in the line. Bradley told the Voice that “it’s a super rare thing, in my opinion. I mean, it’s just a freak accident.”
Godfrey noted in his email that it is quite unusual, but not unheard of, for a leatherback turtle to be ensnared in a buoy. “Based on historical data of stranded turtles in NC, entanglement of sea turtles in buoy lines is fairly rare but does sometimes occur. Looking at records of stranded leatherbacks from the past few years, a more serious threat comes from vessel strikes, usually in the form of cuts caused by boat propellers,” he wrote.
Reide Corbett, Dean of the CSI Campus, noted that nothing like this has ever happened with CSI research buoys and they have been deployed in the ocean for some time. “We’ve been monitoring waves and currents off of the North Carolina coast for well over a decade,” he said. “So this was pretty shocking to us.”
For Corbett and the ocean energy team that has been assembled at CSI, there is considerable effort put into avoiding situations like this. Corbett pointed out that CSI’s efforts to minimize sea life interaction with its equipment has been successful over the years. “Part of that is because of the way we deploy these [buoys], the chances of interaction are fairly slim,” he added.
Nonetheless, Corbett indicated the ocean energy team will be taking a hard look at how the buoys are deployed.
“We certainly will work with the manufacturer of this particular device to try and understand if there’s potentially a different way to deploy it such that it doesn’t have the potential for entangling any sort of marine life,” he said.
