We watched as a big turtle continued to surface and sound in the distance. Every three or four minutes he would come up for air, sit on the surface for a minute or so, and go back down. This was not a green sea turtle, rather a leatherback turtle, named for its beautiful brown back that looked like a weathered leather patchwork covering. Sea turtles are frequently seen in the Florida Bay these days.

Leatherbacks are more rare, and I had actually not seen one in quite a few years.
Anchored and fishing a cut in the bay, we were catching mangrove snapper. While it was not a particularly great trip as snapper go, it was a lazy summer morning and the fish were at least a little cooperative.

As we fished I watched the turtle and thought back to the time we lived in Key West. As a kid growing up there, I remember walking the dock where the Key West Aquarium is today and waiting for the turtle boats to arrive. Shrimpers, small trawlers and turtle boats docked here, along with a myriad of salty fishermen - salty in look, in clothing, and in language. These were commercial fishermen. They did what they did for a living and most of it was manual labor and a skill learned over years of experience.

There were no radar domes or GPS antennas on these boats. Most of them didn?t even have a radio. There were no air conditioned bridges or cabins on these boats. When they left to fish, it meant fishing all day and sometimes all night.

It meant fishing until the hold was full and only then coming back in to sell their catch.

The old turtle haul was there at the end of the dock behind the aquarium. My father had brought me here to watch the turtles being hauled up a sloped dock to the cleaning tables. Still alive, they were on their backs looking around with flippers moving in some imaginary water. As I moved close to them, they would stare up almost as if they were begging for help. Their fate was to be the main course on the menu of places like the Green Turtle Inn farther up the keys.

We ate a lot of turtle meat back then. It was cheaper than any other meat we could buy. Actually it was quite tasty, like country fried cube steak. I never liked the turtle soup, but it too was a featured menu item.

I have a turtle shell somewhere in my collection of things that came from the turtle haul. Three feet long and two feet wide, it stunk to high heaven for a long time because I never really cleaned it that well. My wife used it teaching school, and I had it hanging on a wall. I used to sit and look at it and daydream of growing up in Key West.

I was doing that same kind of daydreaming watching this leatherback when I noticed something was wrong. The tide had changed and each time this turtle surfaced, he did so a little closer to our boat. It seemed he did not realize the boat was anywhere close to him.

The closer he got, the more I could see that something was wrong with his head. Each time he surfaced for air, he blew and seemed to breathe with a great deal of labor. Eventually he surfaced right next to the boat and actually bumped into it.

As he lifted his head higher out of the water, evidently to find out what he had hit, I could see the problem. A growth of some sort was growing on his head. Like a huge flap of skin, it folded down over both eyes and very close to his nostrils. He could not see.

He stayed on the surface and bumped his way along the side of the boat until the current took him to the stern. In the relatively still eddy-water at the stern, he nuzzled up next to the outboard and seemed to just rest.

I took the landing net we had in the boat and gently came from behind, catching him in the net. I expected a lot of fight and frustration, but the turtle did not even kick. I moved him to the side of the boat so we could get a better look at him.