The fastest species can swim at speeds exceeding 20 miles per hour. In the water, they are agile and powerful. Sea turtles are reptiles that have existed for at least 110 million years with little physical change to their sturdy systems. He didn’t blink even when I bent down near him for a closer look. His dark, shiny eyes resembled oversized lychee pits. Henk’s leathery head and tail were outstretched. Three of his flippers extended like fleshy oars almost two feet from his body.

His shell was about three and a half feet long and nearly three feet wide. He was much heavier than the average football linebacker, we would soon discover. The turtle’s mottled gray-green carapace formed an enormous hump on the concrete floor of his shallow pool. His looming silence belied whatever life or death struggle had brought him here. Henk’s left front flipper was a ragged stump that revealed grayish meat and white bone within.

Henk When I first saw Henk, he lay motionless in an empty pool in the outdoor clinic ringed by lush tropical trees. Meanwhile, a local conservation group in Watamu, Kenya races to save endangered sea turtles-by enlisting human allies.

2021 kicks off the United Nations Decade on Ocean Science.

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