COURTESY DLNRS A green sea turtle heads back to the sea at Hilo's Wailoa boat harbor after being rescued by citizens and turned over to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources July 28.

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Green sea turtle
delivered safely back
to Hilo harbor

KEAAU, Hawaii » Police and the public helped save an endangered, 150-pound green sea turtle a week ago that had apparently been caught by poachers, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources announced yesterday.

State officers tagged the female turtle and returned her to the sea the day she was found, the department said.

Motorists reported the nearly 3-foot-long reptile by the side of the Keaau Bypass, five miles south of Hilo, at 4:52 a.m. July 28.

The turtle was uninjured, but even if she had avoided speeding cars, the location four miles from the sea probably meant she would have had little chance of survival.

Mike Kawser, a resource management worker at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, was on his way to work about 4:30 a.m. that day, passing the area of Keaau High School, when two women flagged him down in the pre-dawn darkness.

At first he thought they were joking when they said they had spotted a sea turtle by the roadside, he said.

Neither woman had a cell phone to report their finding, so Kawser called 911. The women drove away while Kawser guarded the turtle until police arrived.

Just down the road, police had been monitoring traffic, parked with their blue lights on, the Department of Land and Natural Resources said.

Officials believe poachers caught the turtle on the lower Puna coastline and were carrying her home when they saw the blue lights and dumped the animal.

Green sea turtles are classified as threatened and are protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act and state law.

Even dead turtles are protected by the law, said Peter Young, director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Under state law, people can be fined a minimum of $250 for simply harassing a turtle and up to $5,000 for killing one.

Department officers John Kahiapo and John Holley placed the turtle in the water at Wailoa boat harbor in Hilo, which gave her just a short swim to Hilo Bay.

"She was healthy, her shell was intact and she was very responsive when we put her on the (boat) ramp," Kahiapo said. "She crawled into the water and swam vigorously toward the open ocean."