HAARETZ (Tel Aviv, Israel) 26 February 08 Vets mend sea turtle's limb in first operation of its kind in Israel
(Eli Ashkenazi)
Veterinarians last week saved the broken limb of a sea turtle in the first surgery of its kind to be performed in Israel.
The turtle, which washed up on the shore near Kibbutz Sdot Yam, is now recovering in a protected pond, where the caretakers are spoiling him with shrimp, cuttlefish and frequent petting.
The brown sea turtle washed up last week exhausted and severely injured. Fishing lines he became entangled with were wound around his front fins, severing one of them and deeply cutting the other.
Amir Horowitz, who found the turtle on the beach, called the Nature and Parks Authority's (INPA) Israeli Sea Turtle Rescue Center. The center's people found that in addition to the fin injury, the turtle was suffering from an old bone fracture that had not mended.
"We saw that blood was still flowing in the limb and decided to save it," says Yaniv Levy, the Turtle Rescue Center manager. "Amputating it would have meant a lifetime in captivity, and don't forget a turtle lives about 70 years."
The center's veterinarians - Rotem Yosef, Tzahi Eisenberg and Ariela Rosenzweig - performed an operation to rehabilitate the turtle's limb bone, which had never been done in the country before.
They set the broken bone with a metal plate and screws, and inserted a bone implant to encourage the mending process.
The bone will take several months to mend, Levy says. Chompy, as the turtle has been named, will spend his rehabilitation period in the Sea Turtle Rescue Center with Gal Handles, a brown female sea turtle who suffered a similar accident three years ago. In her case, the fishing gear caused the amputation of both her front fins, rendering her unable to swim or survive in a stormy sea. She will never be able to return to the wild.
"These two turtles' story is common to many turtles," says Levy. Fishing gear is one of the greatest threats to sea turtles worldwide, in addition to reducing the turtles' laying areas and removing beach reeds.
"Some 100 dead turtles and 50 injured ones requiring treatment are washed onto Israel's beaches annually, almost all victims of fishing gear, pollution, jute sacks, boats and jet skis," he says.
INPA's turtle protection program, including a turtle hatchery and green turtle propagation center, has stopped the ongoing dwindling of the turtle population and led to a rise in the turtles' egg laying in recent years.
Vets mend sea turtle's limb