NOAA Fisheries Image Gallery

Collecting Stranded Sea Turtles

Picture by: Shawn Murakawa/ NOAA Picture taken on: April 19th, 2011

Tags: beach oil turtle southeast deepwater

While efforts were underway offshore to search for and recover oiled turtles, hundreds of dead sea turtles were being recovered in coastal waters or on beaches in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and, to a lesser extent, the Florida panhandle. Each carcass was collected, recorded, analyzed visually for injuries and oil evidence, and put in a freezer to store until it could be necropsied as part of an investigation into the cause of death. While nearly all the 450 turtles rescued alive from the deeper Gulf waters had oil on them, only a few of the dead stranded turtles found on shore and in nearshore waters had external evidence of oil.

Related Story: Collecting Stranded Sea Turtles