“Pull! Pull!” shouts Scott Dexter, chanting the cadence for eight men gripping a rope. “Pull!”
With each pull, a 172-pound male loggerhead sea turtle is hoisted higher into the air. It takes several hoists to lift the turtle about 35 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, where Dexter and others are able to lift the netted animal over the railings of the Navarre Beach Fishing Pier.
The turtle, later named Bowser by medical staff, had gotten hooked by a fisherman near its front left flipper just after 6 p.m. Sunday, and Dexter and other volunteers from the Navarre Beach Sea Turtle Conservation Center sprang into action.
Scott Dexter and his wife Cheri Dexter were already on the pier as part of a rotation of volunteers that staff the pier during the morning and evening hours, when sea turtles are most active. Multiple species of sea turtles frequent the waters around the pier. Some get hooked in the mouth or digestive tract after eating a piece of fish bait, and some are “foul-hooked” or snagged on fish hooks as they swim past. Bowser was foul-hooked in his left front flipper.
The Dexters worked with the angler who inadvertently hooked the turtle to keep the line tight and then guide the turtle into a round turtle net, five feet in diameter. From there, the volunteers recruited fishermen and nearby observers to pull the turtle up over the railing using a specialized hoist that Scott Dexter designed and had built for turtle rescues.
Bowser fought them all the way, trying to wriggle out of the net in the water, and thrashing about on the pier as crowds of onlookers pressed in.
“That’s a good sign,” Cheri Dexter said after the rescue. “If they’re lethargic or just laying there, that’s a bad sign.”
Within 25 minutes, the crew had hauled the turtle onto the pier, cut the fishing line close to the point where the hook was embedded and loaded Bowser onto a Kawasaki UTV to take him off the pier, despite Bowser’s best efforts to escape.
The operation ran like clockwork, because the volunteer team has had plenty of opportunities to practice. Bowser was the 26th turtle rescue of 2026 from the pier; the 27th occurred two days later. Last year the center rescued 59 turtles from the pier, mainly loggerheads or green sea turtles. Entanglements are most common during sea turtle nesting season, which runs from May to October.
The Dexters lead a team of 26 volunteers in Navarre Beach who are certified by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to conduct turtle rescues and transport the animals to an approved rehab facility.
Bowser, a 172-pound loggerhead sea turtle hooked on a fishing line, is brought into the Navarre Beach Fishing Pier for rescue on June 7. Credit: Dennis Pillion/Inside Climate News
Navarre Beach is a relatively small beachfront community in the Florida Panhandle, between Pensacola Beach and Fort Walton Beach on the Gulf Coast, but it boasts the longest fishing pier in the state, extending 1,545 feet into the Gulf.
That also makes it prime territory for turtle entanglements. From 2000 to 2022, Santa Rosa County—where Navarre Beach is located—accounted for 56 percent (254 of 452) fishing pier entanglements reported on Florida’s Gulf Coast, according to a study published last year by researchers at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Navarre Beach has the only large pier in that county and the researchers said every turtle incident between 2014 and 2022 occurred at that pier. The researchers also said 85 percent of turtles Gulf-wide that were rescued during that period were successfully rehabilitated and released, while around 6 percent died during or after their rescue.
Loggerheads were the most commonly hooked species, followed closely by green sea turtles.
Statewide, the federal Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network reported 503 strandings last year in Florida due to incidental capture, which includes fishing entanglements. Across all Atlantic and Gulf Coast states, there were 954 such strandings.
Those figures also only include turtles that are successfully rescued. A far greater number are hooked and escape, or become hooked or entangled in discarded fishing gear. Scott Dexter said about 38 percent of turtles hooked at the Navarre Beach pier are able to be rescued and transported before breaking the line and swimming off with potentially dangerous fishing gear attached.
Sea Turtles Fighting Back, But Still Threatened
Loggerheads like Bowser are one of five sea turtle species found in the Gulf. Loggerheads and green sea turtles are the most common in Navarre Beach, along with the Kemp’s ridley, a smaller turtle that is the most imperiled of all sea turtle species. Scientists estimate fewer than 1,000 breeding females exist in the world.
The massive leatherback turtle, reaching up to 2,000 pounds and capable of diving 3,000 feet below the surface, mainly nests on Florida’s Atlantic coast but is sometimes seen nesting on Gulf beaches. The fifth spe…
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