No but in all seriousness, I am very familiar with this phenomena and have participated in it to the extent that I’ve often found and report turtles washed ashore on ocean side beaches mainly. For many years I fished the “back side” as it’s referred to for Stripped Bass, the real big fish season off-the-beach starts late summer and goes through till almost this time of year depending on the water temps. We fish surf casting live eels, high tides, at night. By the fall the fish have gorged all summer on sand eels and menhaden and virtually anything else they can swallow it would not be unusual on a very good night to land 800-1000 pounds of fish, sometimes 3 or 4 pushing 50 lbs. maybe even a couple pounds more and a majority 30 – 40 lbs. Not a bad night’s work at $5.00+ a pound Fulton price. The CC National Seashore has all but eliminated driving on the beach in Truro where I fished so that might mean dragging these fish a mile or more up to the parking lot to reap those rewards! That’s at least seven or eight round trips. Depending on the tide you might still be there at dawn and that’s when you would find the turtles that washed up on the high tide.

I was involved with and had a marine aquaculture business and very often found my own interests on conflict with the Mass Audubon Society particularly with the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and it’s Director Bob Prescott, so calling them to pick up a turtle always gave me a little satisfaction that when and if he was asked about aqua culturists in general he had to admit that despite his general ill will towards them in fact many of us involved in that endeavor where more than the aquatic rapists and pillagers he preferred us to be seen as! The Audubon has a couple fundraisers each year and I always donated a couple hundred dollars worth of shellfish just to have them print my name as a contributor!

I’m also very familiar with and the Center for Coastal Studies in P-town, many of the important players up there know me well I’ve known many of them for 20+ years. Somewhere in their archives is a video of me in my dry suit along with their whale rescue numero uno Scott Landry in a Zodiac shepherding a 20’ pilot whale a half of a mile out of from a stranding way up in marsh maze of Blackfish Creek when I found it there early one morning when heading out to bring the kids to school. When we leave the house we always drive down to the marsh to see what we can see. The kids agreed f@#k school we’re saving a whale today, go get your dry suit dad!

I did aquaculture on the tidal flats where in the winter and early spring white sided dolphins often beach themselves, the aquaculture guys always help out, in fact a couple of us developed technique of excavating a depression along side the animal that they could be slide into preventing them from asphyxiation due to their unsupported body weight when laying on flat ground. Many of them still die or are euthanized because of the combined stresses of a stranding but a few can be helped off the flats and back into the bay to survive.

So as long as these creatures aren’t obvious liberals I try to help them out and teach my kids to do the same! The liberal critters we just stand there and wait for someone from the government to show up and save them!