DAD GATHERED CHELLIE UP AS if she was a three-year-old again, and set off back the way she had come. She could feel his strong heart beating and his sweat trickling onto her.
He set her down at the top of the sandhills. Together they looked to the beach. The seagulls had returned. Chellie shivered again. Dad took her hand and together they slithered down. She could taste Dad’s sweat and her own tears salty on her tongue.
Dad squeezed her hand as they stood silently looking at Caretta. ‘She’s dead all right,’ he said quietly. ‘Done for by that discarded fishing line. Careless beggars fishermen can be sometimes. Don’t stop to think before they toss stuff overboard, treating the sea as if it’s a garbage tip. And turtles are so vulnerable. Can’t tell the difference between fishing line or a plastic bag and a nice juicy jellyfish.’
Chellie felt a surge of anger and a wave of despair.
‘Loggerheads are endangered !’ she wailed. ‘And Caretta hasn’t even laid her eggs yet. At least, we haven’t seen any of her tracks.’
‘She may have started, laid at least one clutch somewhere,’ Dad tried to comfort her.
But the tears rolled down Chellie’s cheeks. ‘Caretta could have laid six clutches this season. She could have had 750 babies. And one might have survived.’
They stood a few more long minutes looking at the victim of someone’s carelessness.
‘Shall we bury her, Dad?’
‘No, Chellie. The sea will take care of its own. Nature will see to that.’
‘I don’t want the gulls eating her. Or the crabs.’ Chellie glared up at the wheeling gulls shrieking overhead.
‘Gulls are scavengers,’ Dad reminded her. ‘They do a good job cleaning up.’
Chellie shuddered. ‘Can we take a photo of her, Dad? I’ll run home for the camera.’
‘Good idea,’ Dad agreed. ‘We can send it to the turtle research people.’
But just as she turned to set off , Mum’s hat appeared on the skyline. Then Mum appeared.
‘I’ve brought the camera,’ she shouted. ‘When I saw you both tear off , I thought it might be something you could want to photograph.’ She held out the camera and looked down at the turtle which would never go to sea again. ‘Sadly I was right.’
Chellie flung herself into her mother’s arms. ‘Mum, it’s Caretta. And loggerheads are endangered.’
Mum held her tight as she sobbed.
After a moment she pulled away and knelt down at Caretta’s head. ‘Look at this, Mum. She didn’t have a chance.’
Dad took a close-up shot of the vicious tangle of fishing line and one of Chellie kneeling beside the dead loggerhead. ‘See if you can find a couple of metres of rope or twine up in the sea wrack, and we’ll measure her. She doesn’t have a tag, so she’s not on the research record.’
It didn’t take Chellie long to find what Dad had asked for among the seaweed beyond the high-tide mark. Usually she liked combing through all the things that the sea had washed up: a fishing float that Dad could use at the mooring; a long, striped cushion which Mum put on the bench by the back door. Chellie had found coathangers, combs, clothes pegs, and even ballpoint pens that still worked. Once she found a big plastic crate, which Dad took to store things in the shed. Another time she found a perfectly good chopping board, which Mum was pleased to have. A plastic rake head, a paint brush, a broom head, some big plant pots, a swim flipper, a ball and a towel were all treasure trove. She once carried home a bike seat even though she didn’t have a bike, and once a square of blue carpet, which Mum laid beside her bed.
But now suddenly she was aware, as never before, of all the lengths of frayed and knotted rope, the ragged swatches of netting, the long strips of vicious plastic binding, the tangles of fishing line – vicious vicious fishing line – and the plastic lures with lethal hooks and barbs. Plastic bags galore. And bottles. Dozens and dozens of plastic bottles: soft drink, sauce, shampoo, detergent. Even poison. Chellie’s anger flared again. How could people throw poison bottles into the sea?
As Chellie raced back to Dad with the rope for measuring Caretta, she vowed that in future she would pick up every single piece of rubbish that found its way onto the island beaches. Every single piece.