Animal Was Bearing Eggs : Just 1 Bullet Is Found in Dead Turtle

Animal experts examining a giant female leatherback turtle found shot to death off Laguna Beach discovered that she was bearing eggs but found only one of several bullets believed to have caused her death.

“One .22-caliber hollow-nose slug was found in the carapace (shell), but the other bullets could not be located immediately,” John Cunningham, director of the Friends of the Sea Lions Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, said Friday.

Bill Ford, executive director of the mammal center, which cares for injured or ill marine creatures, said workers are looking for other bullets during the necropsy of the turtle that was found Thursday morning off Victoria Beach in South Laguna.

Ford added that the recovery of the single, small-caliber bullet in the shell, which was not a fatal shot, suggests that “there might have been two weapons fired, including one of larger caliber,” and that at least two people may have been involved in killing the turtle.

In Good Health

“Sometime during the process, the other bullets might be located,” Cunningham said. “Meanwhile, the .22 slug is going to be examined by ballistics experts.”

The animal was found to have been in good health, although it could not be determined if the eggs had been fertilized. Cunningham said the turtle could have been as much as 80 years old.

“Her kind are very long-lived,” he said.

The turtle weighs about 1,000 pounds, is 7 feet long and 8 feet, 8 inches wide across the flippers.

A sailor, whose name was not available, reported seeing a leatherback turtle swimming near the Newport Harbor jetties the same day, but there was no indication it was the same animal, center officials said.

The presence off Orange County of one and possibly two leatherbacks, which generally are found in tropical waters to the south, may be the result of what marine biologist Dennis Kelly of Orange Coast College called “unusual water conditions here this year.”

“The water has been warm, then cold, then warm again,” he said. “This could be caused by a tongue of warmer water, called the Davidson countercurrent, reaching up this way against the cold California Current, which flows from the north.”

Kelly said the Davidson countercurrent “is not very well understood” but could also account for some fish from southern waters that have appeared here recently.

When the necropsy of the turtle is completed, center officials said, all but the skull and skeleton will be turned over to a taxidermist.