RIVIERA BEACH, FL--For turtle hatchlings it all starts with a squiggly climb out of the sand, and then a long crawl to the ocean.
But sometimes that journey gets interrupted and doesn't happen at all, that's where a little help from humans comes in handy.
"These hatchlings just were not able to make it down to the shoreline from the nest," said Deb Mauser, Hospital Coordinator for the Loggerhead Marinelife Center, as she picks up tiny turtles from a tank.
At the Loggerhead Marinelife Center it's a big day for these youngsters, it's the beginning of their real lives as turtles in the wild.
"Today's plan is to load them up and take them down to the Coast Guard station in Riviera Beach, and take them on a nice little boat ride out," said Mauser.
"We're going out to do a sea turtle release of twenty six sea turtles. Going about three miles off shore, maybe a little bit farther. Looking for some weed lines out there that we can safely release the turtles into," said U.S. Coast Guard BM1 Gabriel Gervais, as he gave out the pre-departure details onboard the Coast Guard vessel.
A weed line is a line of seaweed floating along in the ocean, and it is something that is crucial to their survival.
"In the weed line... there's food for them, there's camouflage, and they'll stay in this for quite some time and grow," said Mauser.
Usually finding a weed line is pretty easy, but today it proves to be a tough task. Miles and minutes go by with no luck. But then and hour and half and fourteen miles later, one is found.
"We're a little high up, so we're going to have to lean over a little bit to let the sea turtles go," explained Gervais.
One by one they are released with the hope that they will be the one in a thousand that makes it to the shoreline, or the one in ten thousand that ever makes it to adulthood.
"My hope for these little guys is that they get out there, they stay safe, they stay away from fishing piers and hooks, and monofilament, and speeding boats. And we never have to see them again and they live to be a hundred years old," said Mauser.
