“I Think I’ve Caught a Volkswagen”

It was late summer, maybe early fall of ’76 or ’77—one of those warm, hazy days when Calibogue Sound looked like hammered glass and the shrimp trawlers were out in full force. The season was open, the grounds were decent, and every boat in sight was jockeying for the best line. Nothing unusual, just another day working the nets.

I was dragging along when I heard a crackle over the radio.

“I think I’ve caught a Volkswagen.”

I laughed out loud—figured the man was just complaining about old chains, tires, maybe a waterlogged snag of something that didn’t belong in the Sound.

We’ve all been there. I didn’t think much of it and kept working. But a few minutes later the radio lit up again—this time his voice had that sharp edge to it.

“It’s a black turtle! I’ve got a big one here—she’s nearly capsized my boat trying to get her aboard. I need some help!”

Now that’s something you don’t scroll past. I raised my rig, swung the bow around, and steamed toward his boat.

When I arrived, there it was: a massive dark shape tangled deep in his bag—broad, slick, prehistoric-looking. Not your usual loggerhead. Bigger. Much bigger.

We tied up side-by-side and talked it out. There was no way he was getting that turtle aboard without going over himself. So, we decided to put the whole operation onto my boat instead.

I brought my entire rig on deck—doors, net, and bag laid out clean—and then my striker crawled out onto the outrigger, hanging in the air like a circus worker. He clipped the other shrimper’s cables to our winch.

Then came the hard part.

With lines popping, winch groaning, and the outrigger bending more than I liked to see, we hauled his entire trawl gear, net and all, over to my deck. When it landed, the turtle came with it in one astonishing, heavy, prehistoric thump.

And there she was—a Leatherback. Jet black. Smooth like rubber tire. Eyes like something that had seen the world long before we were here to name it.

We moved his net back to his boat, shook hands across the water—one of those quiet acknowledgments shrimpers give one another when something unusual just changed the day—and I pointed my bow toward Hudson Seafood.

On the radio, I called ahead. Hudson’s folks called South Carolina DNR.

When I tied up at Hudsons, a long-bed DNR truck rolled right down the dock. We had to fold her flippers in just to make her fit. The biologists packed the entire bed full of ice around her—truck looked like a snowbank with a sea monster tucked inside.

A few days went by before I called DNR down at Fort Johnson in Charleston to see what became of her.

They told me—plain as daylight—that she was the first Leatherback Turtle seen in South Carolina waters since before 1900. Nearly a century.

Last I heard, the turtle—or a replica made from her measurements—was placed on display at the Charleston Museum for everyone to stand in front of and say:

“My Lord… can you imagine catching that in a shrimp net?”

I don’t have to imagine it.

Paul Tollefson is the Director of Tennis at the Hampton Hall Club in Bluffton. He found his love for the Lowcountry in early 2002 after graduating high school and unsure of what career path he was destined towards. After moving from Hilton Head to Bluffton he became enthralled with the history of the town and the people and cultures that called it home for many generations. He has found a passion in writing and enjoys being able to share the stories and pictures of long-time locals. He is the co-creator of the Facebook page “Bluffton Then and Now.”