Yoshi and the Ocean by Lindsay Moore

This most astounding of stories takes place in the Indian Ocean as a loggerhead turtle finds her way back home. The loggerhead is considered vulnerable so when a Japanese fishing crew found a young, injured turtle in 1997 in the Indian Ocean, they named it Yoshi and took it to an aquarium in South Africa where they knew it would be helped to recover. Here she stayed (as an adult, her sex could be determined) for twenty years, but the staff knew she wanted to get home. They trained her to swim long distances and forage for herself in preparation for the day of release. With a tracking tag attached to her shell, she was released. Each time she came up for air, her tracker sent a message so the people in South Africa could track her movements. They cheered with her as she avoided the fishing grounds of the Indian Ocean, and wondered where she was going as she circled parts of the Atlantic Ocean, then trailed across the Indian Ocean, finally coming to the beach in Shark Bay off the west coast of Western Australia.

Her breathtaking journey is full of dangers as she avoids fishing lines, larger sea creatures, and heavy seas. The illustrations in this powerful book of one animal’s journey will stay with the reader, as her isolation in the vastness of the oceans is shown in glorious detail. We see other marine animals she encounters along the way, the crashing waves, the height and depth of the ocean she travels through, the night sky and the occasional presence of man.

I loved the artwork, the sand dunes and beaches on the end papers, the heavy seas, images of night, the closeups of Yoshi and her determined swim towards her goal.

At the end of the book are details about her trip, statistics that will astound any reader, and lots of information about loggerhead turtles. Another double page gives more information about sea turtles, and links to sites which will give more rescues.

A bibliography, and information about tracking rounds off a most informative and engrossing book.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) website has a page about the loggerhead turtle and this can be viewed at https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/loggerhead-turtle

Themes: Loggerhead turtles, Indian Ocean, Tracking devices, Journeys, Deep sea fishing, Conservation.

Fran Knight