Turtle power!

We Brits are always being told that our ancient shores are not exactly a destination of choice. The climate aint great and everything is expensive. Our latest visitors (apart from Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - anyone else watching Wimbledon?) are a group of lost and lonely loggerhead turtles. Record numbers of them in fact. They’ve been landing here and dying here, all apart from two who’ve just been nursed back to health and released back into the sea. Dink and James have just been flown to Gran Canaria and sent on their merry way, after spending 6 months in turtle rehab in the South West of England. When they arrived, they were both worse for wear, suffering from pneumonia, dehydration and hypothermia. It’s thought they accidentally got too close to the British Isles and our chilly waters, became lethargic and ill and drifted in to the coast. So sad! But unlike the rest, they survived, they’re all better now, and back in the wild. Blue Reef Aquarium curator Matt Slater has been nursing the turtles back to health and was watching when they left. “Hopefully, we won’t be seeing you again. Have many, many years of swimming in the ocean,” he is said to have called out when they swam away. And I know I’m not meant to say this about wild animals, but the pictures of the turtles are incredibly cute and the videos even cuter…

Cowabunga.

(PHOTO: INTHE80S)