Maui County ocean safety officers at Kama'ole Beach Park I recovered the net with a shark and two turtles snared in it. One of the turtles, a young female, died, according to turtle stranding volunteer James Lippert.

Maui District conservation enforcement chief Randy Awo said one of his officers recovered the net, but no one had seen the individuals responsible for placing it in the water or could identify them.

"The witness said she had seen two local men with what looked like the same net in the same place before," Awo said. "She said she didn't call because she didn't realize it was a violation."

For Lippert, who volunteers with his wife, Cynthia, in the Maui Turtle Stranding Network, the death of the sea turtle was devastating.

All of the previous times when he's been involved in recovering a sea turtle, he said, it's been because the animal was stricken with fibropapilloma tumors caused by what researchers believe is a virus similar to the herpes virus.

"She was young, healthy, maybe 20 pounds. There was nothing wrong with her but she was dead. She must have drowned in the net," Lippert said. "It is so sad."

He said another turtle caught in the net was cut loose by the lifeguards who hauled it out of the ocean. While he was aware of the new rule banning use of lay gill nets around Maui, Lippert said he had no previous experience with the nets that are set out on shallow reefs to trap fish and anything that swims by.

"Now that I have seen what they can do, it's terrible," he said. "This was very, very disturbing to me."

Lifeguard Capt. Jeff Meadows said the shark was 8 feet long. He said whoever set the net probably had no intentions of catching the shark.

"To me, it shouldn't have happened," Meadows said. "Sure it was a nuisance. But it's his world and we're just visitors in it. I felt sad, although it does make a job easier since we were having to close the beach because of sightings."

The shark also had a large number of what appeared to be brownish-black worms or slugs around its head and mouth, Lippert said. The parasites filled the shark's mouth and a few were hanging through its gill slits.

One of the worms with small orange spots was peeled off the shark and Lippert said it was similar to a leech, with what appeared to be a rasping mouth that was attached to the shark's skin.

While no one could be sure, it may have been the hammerhead that had been sighted close to the South Maui shoreline since Oct. 20, periodically swimming into the shore break and causing the beaches from Keawakapu to Kalama Park to be closed to swimmers.

A hammerhead shark was first reported Oct. 20 near the old Kihei wharf by two men who said they pulled it onto shore where it regurgitated a fish head before wriggling back into the water and swimming off.

The shark was sighted Sunday and Monday at Keawakapu and Kama'ole Beach Park I. Beachgoers saw it in the shore break at Kama'ole I at sunset on Monday.

The shark was reported close to shore again on Tuesday off the Mana Kai and Kama'ole Beach Park III.

On Thursday, Lippert said he and his wife were covering a shift for the stranding network coordinated by the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. They were called to assist with the dead turtle that had been caught in the net.

A snorkeler made the discovery, lifeguards said.

Awo said the net may have been in the water for several days, but it was not an abandoned net or a piece of marine debris.

"We guess it had been in for two or three days. It didn't have all the algae, the limu that collects if it's been in the water for a long time," he said.

It was probably about 100 feet long, he said. When the enforcement agent got to the scene it had been cut up by the lifeguards who rescued the second turtle and was rolled into a ball.

The net was destroyed, but there is no way to identifying the people responsible for setting it, he said.

"This goes back to how difficult it is to be in as many places as we need to be because we don't have the resources," Awo said.