A really good friend of mine gave me a text one day while I was in Cape Verde to say that they had rescued a Loggerhead Turtle and they had it in a tank keeping it alive until they could figure out the best way to save it.
It was tangled in fishing line and the first thing to do was to get this line off. Next they put it into a fresh water tank to kill of the parasites as they don't like fresh water and the vet was coming to check the turtle over.
The vet did not really have much hope for the turtle as its flipper was really swollen and lost a lot of its scales. She decided to give it an injection to see it would bring down the swelling but she did not hold much hope.
A few days later the swelling had gone down loads and it seemed to be in fine form. The vet was very optimistic that 80cm loggerhead would make it.
I also found out that it should be its feeding grounds now of the west coast of Africa now but hopefully it will be okay and be able to catch up with the rest of them.
Sal itself has a good turtle population and it is very well looked after too. The locals used to eat them all the time but now the realise how important they are to the world as well as Cape Verde, so the numbers over the past few years have increased by 75% which is great news.
Anyway, after a good few days in the tank they said it would be okay to realise the turtle back into the wild and hopefully it will catch up with the rest of them.
Here is some pictures of all the work that they did and a big thank you to Linda for texting me so I could see this wonderful creature and of course to all the work the guys did to make it better.
Taking the rope off
Its flipper all swollen
The vet doing her stuff
What a creature
In the van to the pier
On the boat and out to sea to be realised back into the wild
GoPro footage of it swimming away. What a result.
Some good things do happen in this world
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