With all this talk about collecting living or dead endangered species, I
thought I'd share an experience my wife and I had a few months ago in
Florida.

While I was snorkeling along the Melbourne coast looking for shells, my
wife found a leatherback turtle hatchling stranded on the beach. Being
only a couple blocks from a turtle recovery center and the turtle not
looking to be in the best of shape (we found it on its back, dried out and
away from the water) we decided to run it over to the rescue center, where
they had tanks to store turtles until they are healthy enough to return to
the sea.  When we arrived, the center was closed for the day. I called the
Fish and Wildlife center and they gave me a number of someone to call.

This person I contacted was very helpful and suggested I try to put the
hatchling near the water to see if its instincts would kick in and send it
out to sea. He said if this didn't work to try swimming him out past the
breakers and watch to see if it could swim on its own. It didn't look like
it could swim well, so with no luck with either of these scenarios, I
tried calling Fish and Wildlife back.

On the second call, I contacted someone who told me and I quote. "Most
turtles die anyway so just toss him into the ocean." I asked him to
contact someone at the rescue center. He said he would try but it was
obvious from his tone that he didn't want to be bothered. I told him that
I would keep the hatchling in about 1/4" of sea water to keep him moist
until I heard back from him. He then said I could be arrested for having
him in my possession. I gave him my hotel room and phone numbers and said;
"Well I guess I'll take my chances until someone calls me back or picks
him up."

Well nobody ever called back or came by so I ended up swimming him far out
into the ocean after dark when the seagulls had stopeed hunting and
released him.

It seems that if the government feels it is so important to protect
endangered species, (and I agree that they should) they should also have
plans to save the species they can, while they are still alive. I believe
they do have some sort of plan but if there own employees don't care, how
effective can the laws be?

Any suggestions out there to help improve on this problem?

Best regards,


Mike Schenk