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Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Turtle deaths soar amid fight to save wildlife
Jackye Carroll was walking along the beach that runs outside her home in Pass Christian, Mississippi, early this morning when she came across a curious sight. The sun had just come up and the white sand beach was looking at its most beautiful, but there, just above the gently lapping sea of the Gulf of Mexico was a grey-brown mound of flesh about two to three feet in length.
She put on the gloves that she had brought along in anticipation, and turned the mound over to find that it was a Loggerhead, one of the five threatened species of sea turtle found in this region. The sand around it was being stained red by blood seeping from its nose and underbelly. It was dead.
With the help of a neighbor, she carried the turtle up the beach as she had been instructed to do, and left it by a wooden post where it was still lying a few hours later, by now starting to smell in the muggy Mississippi heat. "I've lived here 20 years and I've never seen a dead turtle on this beach before," Carroll said.
All along this strip, and the 26 miles of beaches to which it connects, people have been reporting similar mysterious sightings over the past couple of days. This morning eight sea turtles were found dead in Pass Christian, in addition to nine yesterday, bringing the total number of dead turtle sightings in the wider area to at least 31.