Here Riley & Kelly Peterson, and mom all from San Diego find a turtle with an Ulua hook in its neck. Looks like the hook has been in the turtles neck for many years. So they came back to the condos to find help and see who could remove the hook. I was notified. After confirming the injury and taking pictures, I made a call to NOAA and waited for a response. They didn't call right away so I took caution to remove the hook as carefully as I could.
This is a close up of the hook still in the turles neck
Together with Peter from Boston, who was also staying at our condos, held the turtle from moving, I pulled the hook out. Because the hook was so rusted, I figured that the hook had been in his neck for a number of years, it seemed that the Turtle bodys natural protection and healing process would have wrapped the hook and I was right. The hook came out just like pulling a cork out of a bottle of vintage wine. "PoP"! and all was good.
Then I massaged his neck. After that, he seemed to tilt his head to look at me, with a sparkle in his eyes. He then turned to the ocean and decided to go swimming. I think he juss wanted to go show his friends that he wasn't wearing his "Bling" any more.
There he goes, happy and satisfied with the surgury. You can see that it's a He turtle because of the size of his tail. Wahine's have short tales.
He even really wasn't too much in a hurry to get back in the ocean. I'm sure he'll feel a lot better tomorrow.
Here's a close up of what the hook looked like. I kept the hook to send into NOAA for their inspection and documentation.
