This large male sea turtle swam past me and i noticed as it approached that its swimming was off. It kept its left front

flipper stationary and propelled itself with right front and left rear flipper. As it got close, I could see fishing line coming

from its mouth and wrapped around neck and flipper as well as dragging behind.

I was able to get a hand on it a couple times and cut away what line I could reach, including the tight strands between mouth and flipper

and neck and flipper. But there was a number of wraps very tight circumscribing its flipper and I was unable to hold the turtle still while trying to

snake out the embedded line and unwrap the flipper. The turtle never swam away from me but it was not receptive to letting me take it towards shore

after getting it to the surface. I fear that the damage may have already been done to the front flipper and it might lose it as many have. Below you can see

some stubs of line coming from its mouth . Hopefully now it can swallow and deal with them.

After doing what I could at the surface I let it go and here you can see it heading back down and you can see the left front flipper hanging down perhaps

acting as a keel.

Here is a short video illustrating how it has adapted to swimming:

Here is some of the line I removed. Shorter pieces I let fall away as I was most concerned with getting it off of the turtle and I failed to get a good

image from its underside where you could see how deep the line was cutting into the base of its flipper. Had I been with someone else I believe we

could have removed the wrapped line from its flipper but whether it would have been in time, I don't know.