Auckland marine biologists who released a rare green sea turtle called Nebs into the ocean two years ago thought they would never see him again after they stopped receiving signals from his tracking device.
However, this morning Quinn L'Heureux pulled up Nebs while fishing off Mangere Bridge.
"I couldn't believe it," he says. "He was so heavy and he put up a really decent fight."
Nebs was named after a couple called Neill and Debs who first rescued him in the Far North at Karekare, in 2011.
Riddled with plastic, Nebs needed two years in rehab at Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium in Auckland.
"[We are] absolutely blown away, couldn't believe it," says curator Andrew Christie. "To find out that it's Nebs, who went missing – [it is] pretty amazing to see this turtle turn up again."
Nebs went off the grid last year after being released back into the wild with a satellite tag in 2013 at Cape Brett.
He enjoyed a tour of the east coast and winter in the Bay of Islands, but then the trail went cold.
"He stopped transmitting July 2014," says Mr Christie. "He disappeared. We thought that was the end of it, the end of the transmissions. We didn't know whether the satellite had broken or the turtle hadn't made it, so to get a phone call today, 'turtle with a satellite tag at Mangere Bridge on the Manukau Harbour', which means he's gone all the way around the top of New Zealand and come back in here a year later, is fantastic news."
It's now hoped his tracking device will cough up vital clues about exactly what he has been up to since.
3 News
source: newshub archive
