Felicia, the nesting female hawksbill, was found dead on Fish Cay and had been brought to Amdeep Sanghera by a fisherman on the afternoon of Monday August 10, 2009. Her data suggests she may have been there since Saturday August 08, 2009. She showed no external damage and the tag is functioning well. Amdeep and Marta have switched off and recovered the transmitter.

Tommy and Amdeep bravely performed a (very smelly!!) turtle post mortem on Felica on Monday, August 10, 2009 which went on well into the night. Probably because the carcass had sat in the sun from Saturday to Monday and so was decomposing, the post-mortem was inconclusive, but did not reveal any obvious signs of significant external damage. The satellite tag was recovered and it can get refurbished by the manufacturers Kiwisat in New Zealand for refurbishment and later deployment in TCI.

While we cannot say for sure why Felicia died, the circumstances around her death may indicate that she suffered complications with egg bearing and laying. She was due to nest on Fish Cay the weekend before she was found dead there. Her post-mortem revealed that her oesophagus and trachea were full of sand, suggesting that she died in the sea and was washed up. She probably died close to the very small Fish Cay in order for her to wash up on its beach, so I guess she was making her way to the beach to nest. 124 shelled eggs were found floating around inside her body cavity and a stone was found embedded in the lining of her very swollen cloaca. Her previous nesting attempt in mid-July was unusual in that it took about 8 nights of emergences on beaches (from night of 16th to night of 23rd July) before she finally successfully nested (on Big Ambergris Cay) - normally turtles will nest in 1-3 nights of emergences.

So I believe (but don't know for sure) that she may have suffered complications with bearing and laying her eggs - perhaps caused by the stone in her cloaca - unfortunately, while we have pics of the stone (see below), it wasn't examined closely so we are not sure what it was or how it got there.