Moments on Maui PART 2: 🚣 Interrupting Tumor Turtle 🐢
For our second day on Maui, we take kayaks and snorkel gear out with my cousin who lives on the island.
We spend all morning reveling in the majesty of nature.
Humpback whales surface with whooshing explosions of breath next to our kayaks. (Oooo!) Sea turtles wing their way alongside us underwater, bathed in whale song. (Awww!)
My cousin's friend Nate walks along the shore to smoke a joint and comes across a rocky beach where two green sea turtles sun side-by-side. He calls us over and we tiptoe around the pair, not wanting to disturb them.
The female scoots a little closer to the male, as though to check he's ok, and we melt in their sweetness.
"They're so beautiful," we whisper, sparkles dancing in our eyes.
That's when tumor turtle shows up.
We see his shell first, cresting a wave, and grow excited.
"Their friend is coming!" we cheer.
Then the turtle rears his head out of the water.
"OH DEAR GOD."
Growing out of his right eye is a pebbly-white tumor, as large as a second head.
He bumps it against a rock and it wobbles around a little bit. Its effect on us is instant and depressing, a cloud passing over the sun.
"Can we poke it off with a stick?" my cousin's friend asks. After some debate, we decide impromptu turtle surgery is ill-advised.
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon sight in the Hawaiian islands.
Fibropapillomatosis is a virus running rampant among Hawaii's green sea turtles, causing internal and external tumor growth.
Photo credit: Peter Bennett & Ursula Keuper-Bennett via Wikimedia, CC
The cause is unknown, but may be related to nitrogen runoff from farming, which builds up in the turtle's algae food source.
The turtle bobs around blindly for a few minutes before heading back out to sea. I blink back my tears - poor honu!
"Well, I hope some shark has a good meal," Nate says in farewell.
Thanks for reading! This one was sadder than usual, but the bright side is that green sea turtle populations have been recovering over the past 30 years thanks to conservationist efforts. Do you have any vacation moments that brought you crashing back to reality?
- Katie, @therovingreader
Wow! That's very sad to read about and must have uncomfortable to see. Last week, I saw another video where a massive turtle had 6-7inches of a straw stuck in his nose. Animal cruelty is such a shame.
Here's the video, such a shame:
Oh, I'm wincing - that's so hard to watch! Reminds me of the time I saw a sea lion with fishing line cutting into his neck - like with the tumor turtle, I was distraught for days. It makes me want to do whatever I can to help mitigate the damage we humans unknowingly inflict.
This is absolutely incredible and makes me want to get to Maui asap :)
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Haha, hello again @chiefmappster. Go ahead, and thanks for your curation effort!
Ello :) haha.
Sounds good congrats again
I feel for the turtles but beautiful photos and video from Maui :)
Thank you! It was moving to see nature at its most beautiful and cruel in the same day.
Ach! That's not a pretty sight. Really though, I think if they were left alone (far far away from humans, that is) they would be better off. On their own they live for centuries, so I guess man-made influences might've contributed to their growth. There really should be efforts to remedy them of this before this gets out of hand. In another life I'm a marine bioligist, and would gladly take up the mantle for this initiative, but in this one I'm just a concerned software engineer.
I feel the same way! Before I ever wanted to be a programmer I wanted to be a marine biologist. One of my best friends went into that field and is saving sea stars.
I hope the scientists who are working on this figure out the cause soon, and that preventative measures can be taken.
Maybe it's a natural path for coders, talking about wanting to be a marine biologist but end up writing algorithms.
Haha, and then using money earned from writing algorithms to gawk at marine life... sounds about right.