Durban - A chance encounter with a loggerhead turtle during a deep-sea dive on the South Coast saved the endangered marine reptile from possibly suffocating after a diver removed a plastic bag from around its neck.
Pinetown dive enthusiast Craig Taylor, 50, was on one of his twice-monthly recreational dives last weekend, about 3.5km off the coast of Scott-burgh, when he noticed the turtle swimming towards him.
He was with his wife Simone and another man, in a Scuba Excursions group, at a dive site called Castle on Saturday morning.
“We were about 20 minutes into our dive, 18m deep when I spotted the turtle coming straight towards me,” Taylor said.
He started taking photos of the reptile, and then noticed something white on it.
“A loggerhead is supposed to be brown. As it came closer I saw that it was in fact a plastic bag,” he said.
The grocery bag was caught around the fully-grown turtle’s neck and fin.
The turtle swam closer, stopping “right on my chest and just looked at me”, said Taylor.
“It tilted its neck to one side as if to say, ‘please dude, remove the packet’.”
With one hand, Taylor held on to the shell while manoeuvring the plastic bag off. “It came off quite easily. I turned the turtle around and gave it a gentle push,” he said. “It looked at me as if to say, ‘thanks dude’, and off it glided.”
Taylor said he had dived in the Red Sea, off the coast of Bali and Thailand and was blown away to have had this “ultimate experience” in KZN.
The incident showed just how polluted the oceans are, said Taylor, adding he was glad to play his part in cleaning it up and doing something special.
Said Taylor: “On my first dive seven years ago, I saw one emerge out of a cave. Since then I have been fascinated by turtles.”
Plastic is believed to constitute 90 percent of all rubbish floating in the oceans.
The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square kilometre of ocean contains 46 000 pieces of floating plastic. - Daily News