WHEN FOUND IN DISTRESS, DO YOUR BEST TO LEaT HER BACK!!!

Back in time once again dear readers. Today we are visiting 2017 for another fishing excursion. Our son a few years prior started making fishing lures for offshore and a new hobby was created for the male side of the Bennett Fam. Although, we were fairly new to the sport Jake and I were learning a lot and enjoyed our time on the water. We were putting in the time and starting to find our own personal fishing holes and understood the in and outs of our boat known as "The Angry Beaver" by friends for reasons we may never understand. Regardless, the "Angry Beav" and crew were prepared for whatever the challenges the Gulf had to offer. And this day the crew would be tested with a very unexpected challenge that not one of us would soon forget. I know their green captain will remember it for the the rest of his life!!!

The crew that Beautiful August day was my son Jake, Coochie and his son Noah and Jake L and his son LJ. We pushed off at 6AM and headed West. The weather person got it right this day, hot dam it was gorgeous. With the perfect weather we were able to arrive fairly early to our first spot about 60 miles out around 8AM. To add to the beauty of the day, the grouper also decided to cooperate and we caught our limit very quickly. We were almost close to what we could legal harvest by 10:30 and were trying to decide what else we should do. Taking advantage of the day we attempted to find species that were in season, but we were only catching fish that could not be kept. We ultimately made the decision to come in a bit early and call it a day. Or, we thought....

About half way back, 30 miles, and in and about 100 foot of water in the distance we all saw what looked like an orange buoy rising out of the water and then slowly disappearing back under. As you can imagine, this intrigued our crew. We slowly headed towards the area of where we saw the orange buoy. As we drew closer, we started to notice a rather larger shadow that appeared to be about 50 or 60 feet deep that was slowly coming towards the surface under the boat. I did my best to stay close to the shadow and to follow all why trying to figure what in the fucking fuck was going on. For the first time the creature surfaced. Letting a a monstrous exhale. As quick and carefully as I could, I headed towards the creature that we now knew was a large sea turtle. Once we got within close proximity the large turtle again went back down. This process happened several more times. What we learned each time was that this beautiful young lady (Latricia) was in distress.  We thought Latricia had got tangled up in a crab trap line and it was wrapped around her rear fins and affecting her swimming. Thus, the orange crab trap we initially saw. Unfortunately, that was only one of her problems. The largest issue Latricia was facing was the crab trap line was still attached to the trap itself, which she was forced to tread water with since she was so deep. As a crew we decided to come up with a plan of action.

After discussing briefly, we decided we needed to time one of Latricia's surfacing's, get along side and hold her up while one of us removes the trap and as much of the line as possible. Sounds easy right???

What we didn't plan on is that Latricia was in my guesstimate a 600 pound Leatherback Sea Turtle. Holding something that large was next to impossible and took a lot of coordination as a a crew. Just getting close to Latricia was hard enough. Then add trying to hold her with a gaff and a couple of guys while one guy hacks at lines that were seamlessly wrapped all over poor Latricia's body. Not to mention we were on a moving boat that no matter what we did would not move the same pattern as our new found lady!!! After several attempts we were able to cut away the line to the crab trap that was pulling Latricia down. I recall Coochie trying to pull the trap into the boat, but the trap was so freaking heavy he had to ultimately let it go and drop to the sea floor. How Latricia was able to tread water with this for who knows how long goes to show how animals do whatever they can to survive. A few more passes and we were able to get the buoy off of Latricia's rear fin and cut a majority of the line from around her body. Latricia had sustained a pretty severe injury on one of her rear fins from all the rubbing on line, but we were all hopeful that she would slowly heal from this over time. For the first time Latricia was not laboring for breath. She was able to stay on top of the surface and appeared to be out of distress. The "Angry Beaver" crew watched Latricia's large head float on top of the water for few moments looking at ease then slowly her head sunk and she swam off.

Peace and Love!!!

P.S.--- I'll send original video to go with story. Sorry for foul fucking language!!!