Coast Guardsmen Were Investigating a Suspicious Item Floating in a Known Drug Transit Zone: Ended Up Rescuing Two Large Sea Turtles Entangled in Fishing Line

Coast Guardsmen aboard the Cutter Stratton from Alameda, Calif. who were investigating a suspicious item floating in a known drug transit zone off the coast of Central America last month instead made a unique rescue.

Video released by the Coast Guard shows that instead of drugs, the crew found two large sea turtles entangled in fishing line and makeshift buoys.

"There was no question what we had to do," said Petty Officer 2nd Class Hylan Rousseau, the coxswain of Stratton's interceptor boat. "And no one spoke a word. We immediately moved in to rescue mode."

An officer-mounted camera captured the rescue operation. One of the turtles had line wrapped around its neck, which restricted its airway and caused apparent respiratory distress.

"We cut the first turtle free without much incident," said Chief Petty Officer Brian Milcetich, a member of the law enforcement team. "While we were freeing him, we could see the second, and much larger turtle, was quite literally choking to death. He had been trying so hard to free himself from the fishing line that he had cinched the line around his own neck."

After lifting the approximately 70-pound turtle aboard the boat, officers used a specialized pair of sheers normally used by emergency medical technicians to sever the line. The video shows the turtle spew out water and take a deep breath once the line was removed from its neck.

"Everyone was elated," said Milcetich. "As you see in the video, he (the turtle) didn't stick around to celebrate."

The second turtle jumped back into water and swam away.

"It's another perfect example of the Coast Guard's ability to quickly adapt to different missions," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Jerry Renfroe.

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Adorable Green Sea Turtle Photobombs a Group of Friends Vacationing Near the Apo Island

Tourist Diovani de Jesus was busy taking a photo with his friends near the Apo Island in the Philippines when a green sea turtle popped up and looked askance at the camera.

“We were posing for a group photo at Apo Island when this sea turtle surfaced to breathe and photobombed!' de Jesus wrote in his blog.

Green sea turtles, which are endangered, are one of the largest sea turtles and are named for the greenish color of their cartilage and fat, not their shells. Green turtles are found in tropical and subtropical waters and lmigrate long distances between feeding grounds and the beaches from where they hatched. They come to Apo Island to feed, which has one of the world's best-known community-managed Marine Protected Areas.

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A Sea Turtle Caught in a Line - Gives Diver Who Rescued Him an Adorable Thank You (Video)

Not every story about sea life mistakenly caught in a net ends this beautifully, so it's important to recognize when one does.

According to Dominican Republic social news site Lifestyle Cabarete, dive partners Cameron Dietrich and Colin Sutton were out spearfishing for tuna off the coast of Mexico earlier this year when Dietrich noticed something was not quite right. A sea turtle had been caught in a line.

Dietrich immediately jumped in to save the turtle, working quickly to remove the mess of ropes around its left flipper. Sutton followed close behind, his GoPro camera on and ready to capture the rescue.

The turtle swam away once freed, but then, to the two divers' surprise, it circled back to Dietrich. For an incredible, breathtaking moment it rested inches above him in the water, close enough for Dietrich to reach out and hold it. It was almost as if the sea turtle was saying thank you.

The World Wildlife Fund names human fishing gear as the single greatest threat to sea turtles worldwide, so the fact that Dietrich and Sutton dived in means something. Most species of sea turtles are endangered, and it's going to take everyone, from recreational spearfishers to commercial fisheries, to move them back from the red.

And with any luck, that means we'll get more moments like this.

UPDATE: David Godfrey, executive director of The Sea Turtle Conservancy, said in an interview with HuffPost Green that the sea turtle’s circular swimming was probably the result of limited paralysis in its left flipper. Motion often comes back very quickly, he said, and was likely not a threat to the turtle.

The divers getting off the boat to help the turtle, he added, “was absolutely the right thing to do, absolutely the best thing that could happen in that situation.”

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