The turtle came ashore behind the Maverick Hotel in Ormond Beach, WESH 2 News reported.

Images from Chopper 2 showed beachgoers gathering around the body, some snapping photos of it.

Before it was clear that it was a turtle floating in the water, many thought it was a human's body because it was so large..

its quite a big one, don't you think , in one of the photos it looks like its been attacked by something, i wonder what killed this turtle?

That gouge looks like it could have come from a very large boat prop funning over it.

yes a boat propeller certainly could of inflicted that injury

poor turtle

Probably a boat prop like suggested, not sure this is a crypto though as there are big turtles like in our oceans.

Probably a large green or black sea turtle..

poor turtle

well i have no idea of the sizes of turtles, so i wasn't sure...

looks big to me though, or is this an average size for this type of turtle?

i guess its only about as big as this turtle...this one may be smaller though

Wow. Big turtle. Poor thing.

Whoa, he was pretty big...poor little dude...

Maybe a shark killed it? I dunno, but that thing is huge!

How sad:( That thing must have been pretty old to have been that big.

Yes very big indeed. Looks like a boat.

That my friends is a leather back sea turtle, and is only average size if that they can grow to lenghts of 8 or 12 ft if i can remember right and about 1200 + pounds. One of my friends did a school project on them not too long ago...

Thanks for identifying the turtle Kazius.

It's absolutely amazing the size that these turtles can amount to. It would be interesting to know exactly what contributed to it's death. Whether it was old age or if something really did kill it.