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Turtle Calling Back Home

A loggerhead turtle like Sennet
A loggerhead turtle like Sennet

By Laurin Penland

Wilmington, NC – Sennet, a juvenile loggerhead sea turtle, was found floating in the ocean off Cape Lookout nearly dead a year and half ago. Now he's swimming along North Carolina's coast with a Satellite transmitter on his back.

Sennet was brought back to life at the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center on Topsail Island.

His caretaker and the Director of the Center, Gene Beasley, says Sennet is part of a decade long global initiative to track endangered animals. Beasley says the information will be used to protect loggerheads in the future.

"You know that it's a dangerous world out there. You know that bad things can happen, and yet you know that you have to let them go. Sennet has the right to be a real sea turtle living free."

So far Sennet hasn't paddled too far from home. Beasley says one of the surprising findings of the tracking study is that not all loggerheads go far South in the winter. She says loggerheads must love North Carolina, because they keep hanging around.

Do you have insight or expertise on this topic? Please email us, we'd like to hear from you. news@whqr.org.