Nick Schwartz takes kayakers and paddleboarders out daily, but during one of his sunset tours Friday night, he was horrified to find a lifeless hawksbill sea turtle.
"We see them all the time on tour, turtles, dolphins, manatees, but to find large mammals like that washed up dead, we don't really see them," said Schwartz, with Paddle Naples. "Maybe 200 yards out. I'm like, dude, there's no way this thing's just here, you know? So we get up on it. It's not moving. Actually had a flipper missing on the front right flipper. Still bloody in the face. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it was fresh. It was huge. Like, the head was the size of a basketball. I kid you not, this thing was monstrous."
The dead sea turtle was found on Big Hickory Island. That's when Schwartz called FWC to report the dead sea turtle.
"A young lady biologist, she got back to me Saturday afternoon and said that there was another one reported on the beach. She's in to check if it was the same one, same beach, and that it was about the same size, and they buried it. Most of them are endangered or they're protected. They want to document the population's migratory patterns. If there are photos, they might be able to identify, you know, that specific animal and know where it came from," Schwartz said.
This isn't the only marine life that Schwartz has recently found dead on Big Hickory Island, a dead manatee was also reported to FWC weeks ago. While Schwartz is unsure how the sea turtle died, he wants to bring awareness to those out on the water.
"You want to protect the animals out here, and make Florida a home, make Florida a destination for people who want to come visit. If there are no manatees, there are no turtles because we run them over," Schwartz said.
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