1 Turtles Trapped In A Net Turned Loose By U.S. Navy

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Navy came to the rescue of some sea turtles trapped in a fishing net in the Indian Ocean.

The rescue occurred Tuesday about 375 miles west of Bombay. Crew aboard a Navy SH-60B Seahawk helicopter off the guided-missile frigate USS Curts spotted 11 turtles entangled in an abandoned net.

The Curts, returning to Yokosuka, Japan, after serving in the Persian Gulf, changed course and steamed 80 miles to the scene.

Arriving after nightfall, the Curts dispatched a small inflatable boat with five crewmen who discovered the 11 turtles, one of them already dead. Freeing the entangled turtles took two hours.

The turtles were tentatively identified as leatherbacks.

"It was easy cutting but the turtles were really wrapped up," said Fireman Hans Sievert, one of the five men in the boat.

The rescue was not the first animal-related adventure for the frigate, skippered by Cmdr. Thomas Delery of Stoneham, Mass. Two years ago, in the same general area, the Curts towed a disabled livestock freighter to Oman, Jordan, saving its 23-member crew and cargo of more than 700 sheep. The freighter had been adrift for three days without food or water.