VIDEO: Stranding team releases 3 sea turtles in Virginia Beach

VIRGINIA BEACH

Christina Trapani has a sea turtle tattoo on her ankle, a small business in recycled bags with sea turtle logos, a photography business named for a sea turtle, and a job with the Virginia Aquarium's stranding team that involves rescuing, rehabbing, photographing and, sadly often, dissecting dead turtles to see what makes them tick and what made them sick.

But she never gets to set them free.

That would change Monday morning when the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center released three turtles, of three different species, into the Chesapeake Bay at Chick's Beach: Frosty, the little green turtle who got too cold on Christmas Eve and stranded at Back Bay; Randall, the little Kemp's ridley who was hooked by an angler May 5 at Little Island Fishing Pier; and Atlantis, the great big loggerhead who for two weeks pretty much everyone thought was dead.

The stranding team has lots of experience in really dead and nearly dead, and they knew Atlantis wasn't lost yet.

So they floated the loggerhead in a life preserver to prevent drowning, scratched his back to check his responses, arranged acupuncture sessions and tried, really hard, to tempt him to eat. They kept on working really hard even as May and June crept up and unloaded nearly 100 more turtles on the team, most of them long dead, extremely decomposed, stinking but needing dissection. Trapani collected turtles, dissected turtles, photographed turtles, kept records on turtles and finally, as the number of strandings eased up, helped get Atlantis ready for release, 8-1/2 months after he'd been found, sick and lethargic, in New Jersey and transferred south for the winter.

Volunteers usually release turtles as a nice "thank you" for all their work. Volunteers released Frosty and Randall.

But just this once, Atlantis was an all-staff release because Atlantis had worked them so hard. And this time, Trapani gave the camera to someone else. She took the right-front quarter of the four-person lift and helped tote the turtle to the water's edge.

The crowd that had gathered to watch clapped and cheered. Cameras snapped. Video rolled. TV reporters did stand-ups.

"That was so fun," Trapani said afterward, and she took her camera back and waded into the water and snapped and snapped and snapped.

It was fun, but it wasn't a first. On Monday morning, as Trapani left her house for work, she found a little box turtle on her front doormat. It seemed to be fine. She looked it over and, since there is no such thing as a free lunch, she took it straight into the woods and, without any fanfare, set it free.

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com