Yesterday Lucas took me out to visit the fishing nets that had been put out early in the morning. He and his friend paddled a canoe out, and then placed it perpendicular to the net, which was layed out in a U-shape, to catch the fish that swim in one end. As the pulled the net over the middle of the boat, fish, shrimp, jellyfish and trash that were caught in the net would drop into the canoe. It was really cool to see this type of fishing that has been done for centuries and continues to live on, despite the huge ships that are now predominantly over-fishing the oceans.

The coolest (and saddest) part of yesterday was that we pulled two turtles caught in the net. They were probably around 3 years old and maybe 4-5 kg. An imbricata (hawksbill) and a chelonia mydas (green) had swum right into the net on their way to sleep under the rocks right by the coast. The hawksbill is rare in these parts of Brazil, so it was that much more exciting to see it. After doing some CPR chest compressions until they spit up water in their lungs and were breathing regularly, we let them go.

It was unreal to see what we had learned about in theory during my time at TAMAR: that fishing is one of the biggest threats to sea turtles, but with the right training (turtle cpr) they were all right.