Wildlife officials have not established a cause of death of a green sea turtle that washed up on Kailua beach Saturday morning.

Kailua resident Karl Meinhardt said the animal did not have obvious injuries or discoloration. He said it came up at Castles Beach at the north end of Kailua Bay.

A contractor for the National Marine Fisheries Service collected the animal shortly before noon. It was placed in a chilled storage locker pending a necropsy this week.

Hawaiian green sea turtles are listed as a threatened species, although their numbers have increased dramatically after fishing for them was banned in the 1970s.

Most of the Hawaiian population nests at French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, but the animals frequent all the islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago.

Turtles are found dead on the shore for a variety of reasons.

Often, they have drowned after being caught in fishing gear such as gill nets, but they can also suffer from predation by sharks, ingestion of plastics and a range of diseases.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.