Police Officer Rescues Baby Sea Turtles
SARASOTA (CBSMiami/AP) — All Florida police officers take a sworn oath to 'serve and protect', but one officer in Sarasota took it to a whole new level last weekend.
Officer Derek Conley was on duty Saturday around 1 a.m. when he saw a group of baby sea turtles stranded at the front of the Lido Beach Resort.
Someone then came to Conley and told him that there were more sea turtle hatchlings walking around in the parking lot.
Conley and some of the resorts guests then went work.
"I began collecting hatchlings from the street and stopped traffic several times to do so," wrote Conley in a report.
They gathered about 100 of the turtles, scooped them up and put them in a box.
Conley then released the hatchlings in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to biologists the hatchlings, which come out of their nests at night, are born with the instinct to move toward the brightest direction — which could be why the Sarasota turtles were headed toward the hotel's front door.
Only about 1 in 1,000 baby turtles survive to adulthood, said biologists.
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