Grey shaded sea turtle tattoo with a Celtic knotwork shell and a yellow ribbon accent, on the side of the torso, with a faded shark tattoo below.

Celtic knot sea turtle on the side of the torso

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A sea turtle seen from above fills most of the frame, with its shell worked in Celtic interlace knotwork. Black and grey shading gives the flippers and shell depth, and a single yellow ribbon shape runs through the centre of the shell. A faded grey shark sits lower down on the skin, partly out of focus.

Ribs Sea turtle Celtic knot Shell Ribbon Shark Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have the galley knife in one hand and a cold potato in the other when the net comes over the rail at four, heavy as wet cement. Inside it, tangled in mesh, is a turtle the size of a bin lid, its flippers working slow and furious. Dougie says it is a sea turtle and not a fish, and you cannot put a sea turtle in the stockpot, so you fetch the sacking and wet it down while the deck hands swear.

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The shell is a wonder even under the scabs of the net. Someone has worked it in knotwork, loop inside loop, the same interlace your gran stitched on tea towels in Penzance, every line running into the next so you cannot find where one begins. Down the middle a ribbon the colour of old oilskin lies across the pattern, and you think it must be a sailor's mark, a pledge, a wife's favour. Off the stern a grey fin keeps pace with the wake, patient as a bill collector.

The bosun wants the turtle gutted for the freezer. You say no, and then you say it again louder. Nobody has ever won an argument with a cook holding a knife, so you cut the mesh one strand at a time while the swell lifts the hull and the fin slides closer. When the last loop gives, the turtle drops onto the wet planks, rolls once, and goes over the side without a splash worth mentioning.

Back at the stove the rice has caught on the bottom. You scrape it out with the spoon, black and sticky, and you do not tell Dougie that you watched the shell go under the wave, knotwork still turning, the yellow ribbon the last thing you saw.