Last night, Sandy had a very exciting recapture on the south end of Singer Island (Palm Beach Shores)
I was in the office when she called to say she found her first leatherback turtle of the season. She told me the turtle’s name, and I quickly looked her up in our database and told her who it was. After a few minutes of chatting about her first turtle, I realized that it was Venus! We all thought that we would never see Venus again after her last encounter in 2006.
Venus had been hit by a large boat just prior to nesting that season and it was very hard for us to watch her crawl up and down the beach and throw as much sand as she did. The boat had severely lacerated her carapace and the wound was bleeding and full of sand and debris. She seemed to put a lot of effort into making her nests, even though she was bleeding from her cracked open carapace. Many of us that observed her, really thought that there was little chance for her to survive her terrible injuries.
