My mom was the one who first spotted this turtle. Initially, she thought it was some kind of boulder in the water, but then she suddenly started to exclaim, "There's a turtle! A really big turtle!!!" And she was right. This was the largest snapping turtle that I've ever seen on the Marsh. Just his head and neck must have been at least a foot long - very possibly longer. However, his huge shell dwarfed them. He was gigantic!

The two lens that I had on my Canon bodies at that moment were the 600mm f/4 with double 1.4 extenders & the 300mm f/2.8 with the 2x extender. So I wasn't prepared to shoot such a large turtle relatively close to shore. Reacting, I took a "security pic" with the 300mm f/2.8 at 600mm to at least get some kind of shot. Having gotten this head profile, I then removed the extender to try for a full body shot.

Unfortunately, that was exactly when the giant turtle decided to go diving. So I missed that shot. Honestly, I don't know for sure that even backing down to 300mm would have captured all of him. That turtle was so huge! Although we waited for close to 20 minutes for him to resurface, he never did. But maybe someday, I'll see him again. Who knows? Meanwhile, I'm happy with the head shot that I did capture. That was one memorable turtle! I still can't believe how big he was.

BTW, we saw him in the same pool where those mysterious marsh creatures http://www.pbase.com/britestar/creatures_from_the_blue_lagoon were spotted back in March. To date, no one can really identify what those things were. Hummmmm? I wonder what is really in the water in that pool...