This is a sad tale and I should warn you from the outset some of the images are not pleasant.
Here in Cebu a large part of tourism is based around the diving industry, we have many attractions for the traveling diver, the famous sardine storm/run of Moalboal, healthy corals, tons of fish varieties and a large population of turtles. It is the later that I am writing about today, when I first started diving here I was blown away by the sheer number of turtles, we have Green and Hawksbills in abundance and the odd leatherback although I have not seen one of them. As a underwater photographer I spend a lot of time taking pictures of these hero's in a half shell and when you are in close proximity to one of these guys you get to make real eye contact and it feels that you make some kind of unspoken connection with them.
It's a honor to be able to enter their world and share their space and it seems they are mostly happy for us to be there.
As divers most of us understand the rules of respecting their space and keeping our distance, certainly no touching. But this is where the story turns sour, there have recently been cases of fishermen hunting these protected and endangered species, something that was common place in the past but it was hoped this was a dying trade. In the last few weeks there have been arrests for such practice which is a good thing but only a few days back another horrifying story hit the news.
On a small island off Lapu Lapu which is near Cebu city a large green turtle was found dead with a speargun injury to it's neck, it is not known who the perpetrators were or the circumstances surrounding the killing. There is always the chance it could have been a misguided shot at a fish that hit the turtle, as you can see in the photo above they often rest in the corals, so it 's feasible that a spear fisherman with his focus on a fish missed and hit a turtle unwittingly, that's my very generous possible scenario.
Whether accident or malicious this is a sad out come for this particular turtle which was a fair size and could easily have been a hundred years old, The next images are not pretty so be warned again.
https://www.sunstar.com.ph/T
A sorry end for such a majestic beast, from the top image you can judge by it's size it had achieved a ripe old age but also there is evidence that this poor creature had suffered in the past as there is a large piece of it's shell missing which is clearly a old injury, often caused by boat propellers.
I have no answers nor do I have enough words to express how upsetting this sort of event is, what could drive the individual to do such a thing is beyond me, of course if malicious monetary gain could have been the reason but that doesn't compute as the turtle had been left in the water, so could this have been a unfortunate accident? We will probably never know the answers to these questions the best we can hope for is the authorities investigate thoroughly and clamp down on illegal activities.
This has been horrible to write about but some of the ugly things in the world need to be seen, let hope none of us ever have to witness something like this first hand, I'll sign off now with a more uplifting image of turtles.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my post, sorry for the upsetting subject matter. Until next time stay safe folks!
