No, this 'giant' turtle was not beached in Mexico or Brazil

A Facebook video of a "Massive turtle in Mexico," from June 2017 was viewed more than 60,000 times. An internet search reveals that the same video was shared in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, also suggesting that the turtle was spotted in Mexico, while one video  viewed 293,000 times suggests that the scene took place in Brazil.

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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken on March 1, 2019

However, searching through French web content suggests the video actually took place in the Caribbean. An article from May 7, 2018 in France-Antilles, a local media covering French territories in the Caribbean, features photos of the same turtle from a different angle. The beach, the article reports, is La Perle, near the town of Deshaies, on the west island of the Guadeloupe archipelago.

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Screenshot of local media France-Antilles taken on March 1, 2019

A similar video that was viewed more than 46,000 times was published on May 6, 2019, by a Facebook user who says he lives in Guadeloupe, a French archipelago in the Caribbean sea.

The details of the crowd in the background of the various photos and videos, such as red and yellow bodyboards held by onlookers, as well as the shape of the turtle, allow us to determine that they were all taken at the same time and place.

The turtle is not giant either. As the other angles of the same scene show, the perspective of the viral video is misleading: while the turtle appears almost as large as the onlookers further behind, photos show that it is in fact smaller.

The video was not taken in Mexico, nor in Brazil, but in Guadeloupe in May 2018.

This article was translated by Louis Baudoin-Laarman.