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Marine Turtle Newsletter 93:14, © 2001

Marine Turtle Newsletter-Online

Third Leatherback Turtle Stranding in Belgium

Jan Haelters1, Francis Kerckhof1 & Thierry Jauniaux2
1Management Unit of the North Sea Mathematical Models, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences,(E-mail: J.Haelters@mumm.ac.be)
2Veterinary pathologist, University of Liège, Belgium

On the 19th of December 2000, a male leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) stranded near Oostende (51°13.4’N; 002°53’E), Belgium. The animal measured 194 cm (total body length) and weighed 370 kg. It was alive when it stranded, but in a very weak condition. It died within a few hours. The animal was subject to necropsy on the 22nd of December at the University of Liège. The necropsy revealed two parallel wounds, penetrating through the plastron, with the underlying muscles showing necrosis. It is thought that the wounds were caused by a ship’s propeller some days before the stranding.

This was only the third recorded stranding of a leatherback turtle in Belgium. The first concerned a decomposed animal with a carapace length of 135 cm that washed ashore on 24 December 1988 at Middelkerke (51°12’N; 002°49’E) (Van Gompel 1989). The second record concerned an animal of a similar size that we presume was cut in two by a ship’s propeller. One part was fished up by a fisherman on 10 September 1998 near De Haan (51°17’N; 003°02’E), and the larger part of the animal washed ashore the next day (Haelters & Kerckhof 1999). From the animals that stranded in 1998 and 2000 a number of Stomatolepas dermochelys (Crustacea, Cirripedia) were collected.

HAELTERS, J. & KERCKHOF, F., 1999. Een waarneming van de lederschildpad Dermochelys coriacea (L.) en de eerste waarneming van Stomatolepas dermochelys Monroe & Limpus 1979 aan de Belgische kust. De Strandvlo 19(1): 30-39.
VAN GOMPEL, J., 1989. Eerste waarneming aan de Belgische kust van de lederschildpad Dermochelys coriacea (Linnaeus, 1758). De Strandvlo 9(4): 102