5 Green Turtles at Turtle Reef

I went diving on Friday with Doug and Molly, from Minneapolis. They have been diving with us all week, and we just had the greatest time with them. I thought on their last day that I would take my camera so that I could get some nice shots of them, and also because it was the birthday of Molly!!!
As you can see here, we celebrated underwater with a birthday "hat bag." Molly was supposed to hook it around her ears, but I didn't explain it well enough under water! Anyway... Happy birthday Molly. Diving birthdays are always the best!

We were planning on going to the Dutch side to dive the Porpoise and Le Pont, but the weather was picking up, and also with the Heineken Regatta, it isn't the best idea to be travelling so far with so many sailing vessels around. So instead, we opted for our local reefs. I know that they are close, and not so shallow, but really they are the best sites! Doug said that they were his favorite dives and I have to say, that they were two great dives.

We dropped in at the back of Creole Rock, diving it in the opposite direction that we normally do. This is fun to do if you have already dived Creole Rock, as you get to see different things. Well, we weren't disappointed as we saw two Spotted Eagle Rays, one of which stayed with us for ages, cut in front of us, and then doubled back. We also saw loads of fish, Molly saw a big sting ray in the sand, but doesn't have a tank banger, so Doug and I missed it. Here is a photo of the eagle ray that I saw.

This was the first, and bigger of the two eagle rays. They always look like they are smiling!

Then at Turtle Reef we saw so many Green Turtles. Usually we see more Hawksbill turtles as they are less skittish around divers, but that wasn't the case on Friday. We were following two, and then all of a sudden there was another one, and then again later in the dive we saw more. The Green Turtles aren't so easy to photograph, as with my fish eye lens I really need to get close to get a good shot, and the Green turtles usually swim away once they see us. However, I was able to get these shots below.

We did notice that one of the turtles had some kind of growth on it's eye. So I did some research on the internet and it looks like it is a fibropapilloma tumor. There were two on the turtle that we saw, one on it's eye and the other just under it's arm. You can see it in a couple of the photos.

The tumors look more like "a wart gone wild" than a malignant cancer, but they can be still be deadly. The tumors frequently occur near the eyes and throat, and as they grow in size they impair the turtle's vision and ability to eat and breathe. It is really sad, and we hope that we don't start noticing it in other turtles as well.

I have contacted the Nature Reserve and sent them a photo, to hopefully see if they can do something about it. I'm not sure what they will do, but simply documenting it is a start. Then if we can figure out if it is a rare occurrence, or something more frequent we can start to see what the cause is.

On a lighter note, in celebration of the Heineken Regatta we have the Wailer's playing at Kimshaw beach tonight in Simpson Bay. So the Octopus Team, plus a few others are going to go dance to some Reggae tonight.

All the information about the green turtles was from "Epidemic Levels of Tumors Found in Green Turtles" from http://www.turtles.org/lnturtle.htm, accessed March 8th, 2009.

(this blog was written by Sally :) )