Turtle of almost 1.80 meters washed up on a beach in Belgium: ‘Haven’t seen something like this in at least 23 years’ | Abroad

They were hikers who saw something lying on the beach on Saturday morning on the beach of Knokke, near the Zwingeul. As they approached, they quickly noticed that it was a turtle. They alerted the emergency services, but they could only determine that the animal had already died.

The carcass was already in the first state of decomposition and was removed by the fire brigade and taken to the barracks. From there the cadaver was taken away for further investigation into the cause of death. It will also be examined what the animal has eaten and whether there is plastic in the stomach. “It will certainly provide useful information,” says Jan Haelters.

More specifically, it concerns a leatherback turtle, the largest turtle species in the world. “The animal found has a length of 1.73 meters and weighs approximately 250 kilograms. So it is an adult specimen,” says Jan Haelters. “This is certainly exceptional. In my 28 years in business, this is only the third time this has happened. I think the last time was in Ostend in the year 2000.”

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At the time it was a specimen weighing 350 kilograms. At that time, it was the third time that a leatherback turtle washed up on the Belgian coast. In the following years, several observations of living specimens took place in the North Sea off the Belgian coast. This happened, for example, in 2019, about 7 kilometers off the coast of Oostduinkerke.

In principle, the species mainly occurs in the Atlantic Ocean. “The fact that they wash up here is very exceptional,” says Haelters. “How can that be explained in this case? The species mainly feeds on jellyfish and jellyfish are common in our North Sea. This turtle may have followed a school of jellyfish.”

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