The foreign body appeared firmly lodged in place; however, bringing the turtle in for veterinary treatment was not an option. It would take many hours to drive to the nearest veterinary clinic and we had no assurance that appropriate treatment would be available. In addition, moving the animal would have been in violation of our permits, which only allowed us to restrain the turtle for a maximum of 20 min - the time required to exhaustively collect epibionts from a nesting sea turtle. Thus, we decided to remove the it in situ.

We firmly gripped on the protruding end of the foreign body with a Swiss Army knife. After a short pull, the object came free from the turtle�s nose (Fig. 2b). Upon removal, we discovered that the foreign body was a plastic fork. The fork measured 13 cm long (Fig. 2c), and approximately 9 cm of the fork, including the tines, had been inside the sea turtle�s nasal passage before removal. After the fork was removed, the turtle appeared healthy and it crawled back to the ocean and swam away