Video: Rescuing a Hawksbill sea turtle in Watamu

Not all heroes wear capes. On Saturday 16 January 2016, we got a call from a local Watamu fisherman who had unintentionally caught a Hawksbill sea turtle in one of his fishing nets.

We immediately acted on the call and sent out Fikiri, our By-Catch Net Release Programme Coordinator, to check on the health and well being of the sea turtle before releasing it back into the ocean.

Luckily for us, we had the guys from HerdTracker and Make It Kenya in town promoting their #KenyaLive campaign which showed the world what a typical bush-and-beach safari to Kenya is like, via a series of live web broadcasts on Twitter’s Periscope app from 7-18 January 2016.

Here’s a series of videos (all of which were broadcast live!) showing just what it’s like to rescue a sea turtle in Watamu — and then to see it being released back into the ocean.

Local Ocean Trust’s turtle project in Watamu has released more than 13,500 turtles since inception in 1997.

Fikiri and his team release 4 turtles per day on average.

We hope you enjoy watching the rescue and release of this hawksbill turtle. Links to part 2, 3 and 4 of this rescue are below the video.