ISLAND OBSERVER

The saga of the big green sea turtle that was found entangled in longline fishing gear in the Lydia Ann Channel last week continued with a surprising and somewhat embarrassing twist, followed by yet another twist.

We were preparing to take the turtle to the Padre Island National Seashore (PINS), where it would be outfitted with a satellite tag and released.

We named the tur tle “ Smokey,” after Smokey Gaines, the late father of Randall Gaines, who played a big role in our being able to rescue this 193-pound turtle.

This Smokey was one of the largest green sea turtles the ARK has ever encountered, and one could see that its tail extended beyond the shell, indicating that it was a male. Yet, despite its 193-pound (or 88 kg) weight, it would be on the lower end of adult weights, which can be as much as 600 pounds.

I thought it might be a young adult male whose tail was not fully developed. I even had asked ARK staff to measure the tail length to make sure Smokey was a “boy.” Boy, was I wrong!

Ready to run A greater roadrunner waits in a pet carrier before being released at Mark Grosse’s Port Bay Ranch. The bird was a patient at the Animal Rehabilitation Keep (ARK). COURTESY PHOTO BY TONY AMOS Monday morning, the ARK’s Sunday supervisor, Guy Davis, found no fewer than 60 eggs in Smokey’s tank. Smokey was obviously a she, not a he!

Exciting as this find was, sea turtles lay their eggs on the beach in the sand, not in the sea, and the eggs might be ruined by seawater. Half the eggs were indeed broken, but the rest were carefully washed with fresh water and placed in an egg box with some good dune sand, just as we would do if a turtle nest was found in the dunes and the eggs excavated for incubation at PINS.

We will not know if any of these eggs are viable for a couple of months. A decision was made to go ahead with the tagging and release in case she still had eggs to lay. (Green sea turtles can lay up to five clutches in one nesting season.)

Then came the second twist to the tale. (Or should that be “tail?”) We discovered that Smokey had an infestation of marine leeches that were hatching from eggs attached to her skin in places near the neck and the tail area. This caused more worry as these leeches, known as Ozobranchus, may be a link in the development of the tumors called fibropapiloma that affect green turtles in Hawaii and Florida, and have only recently been found on greens in the Gulf of Mexico.

We gave Smokey a freshwater bath that kills the leeches, and by the time she was ready to go to the seashore, we had lost most of our student volunteers we had commandeered to accompany her for the drive. The tense 33-mile drive to the seashore was punctuated by several stops to make sure all was well in the truck bed as ARK volunteer Chaney Taylor valiantly struggled to keep Smokey calm and comfortable.

On arrival, turtle biotech Jennifer “Shelby” Walker applied the satellite tag under the watchful eye of Dr. Donna Shaver with several PINS workers keeping Smokey still. Smokey was released on the seashore’s closed beach as the Sunday sun set. She can be tracked on line at www.seaturtle.org.

Our day at the ARK was not over. We got in three small greens, two of which had been injured by boat propellers. One had been hooked in the eye by a fisherman. Then, at 2 a.m. Monday, I got a call about “some people trying to net a big green sea turtle at J.P. Luby (Park).” My middle-of the-night investigation, along with help from the police, found nothing.

Later on Monday, I got to release a “Paisano” (greater roadrunner) at Mark Grosse’s Port Bay Ranch. The bird was brought in last month, all the way from Boerne. The photo with this column shows it in the carrier just before release. It was too quick for me to photograph in the wild when it saw freedom. (Beep, beep!)

Tony Amos is a research fellow at The University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas and director of the ARK (Animal Rehabilitation Keep).