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A leatherback: constellations of barnacles scattered over shell, tapered beak hanging slack; dead. Raw broil-lumps raised red on the neck, blood slick over skin. It takes two of us to haul it onto the boat, corpse-heavy, wet thud. We used to name them; now we don’t bother.
Sam digs his hand into its mouth and emerges with a dripping, stinking trail of plastic. The body slumps forward and he catches it with his knee.Later it will lay dissected, unblinking, cloying up formaldehyde on a necropsy table. Knots of dark, slithering intestines will be spread out, entrails webbed with gauzy serosa. Smashed-in carapace, sliced by scalpels and peeled-back fat, gloved fingers digging into organs, they will find fistfuls of the stuff.
There have never been false angels; the leatherback trusts its own eyes. I know what it saw. Reaches of sunlight refracting on the rippled surface, white halo beaming translucence. Angel in the water, a moon jellyfish. Blooming and contracting with the current, soft and serene. The turtle is easily fooled.
This one floated towards us with the false angel still hanging out of its mouth, miasma of rot on its tongue. Most will wash up, some without heads, when the tide recedes.
We wrap the body in plastic to stop the smell.
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