Durban — With one less flipper, a green sea turtle, was recently released back into her natural habitat after rehabilitation at the SA Association for Marine Biological Research’s (Saambr’s) Sea Turtle Hospital at uShaka Sea World. She has already travelled more than 600km - all the way to Mozambique.
Maia was released on December 13th and had made her way up to Mozambique by December 21st - an average of a half-marathon swim per day - after spending two years at uShaka rehabilitating.
“We are incredibly proud of little Maia’s journey thus far. As a young sea turtle she still has many years ahead of her before reaching reproductive age and she could very well (have) decide(d) to hang around in this perfect turtle habitat. The nearest green turtle nesting sites are about a 1 000km north-east of here, so not too big a journey considering how well she travels,” said Saambr’s Ann Kunz.
She explained that the turtle was named Maia, the Moari word for courage as she displayed true courage, bravery and a headstrong attitude to recover.
Maia was found in the Isimangaliso Wetland Park in December 2020 with a woven plastic bag so tightly wrapped around her left front flipper that it caused severe necrosis and the partial loss of that flipper. She also ingested plastic while trying to free herself. Kunz said after extensive rehabilitation, including surgery, antibiotics, various radiographs and lots of tender loving care, Maia recovered beautifully and was medically cleared for release exactly two years after her rescue, albeit with one less flipper.
Kunz said that Maia had a small satellite tag attached to her carapace (shell) and they hoped to be able to track her movements and spatial ecology for at least a year in collaboration with the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.
“This will enable us to analyse the post-rehabilitative movement and performance of sea turtles with flipper amputations. We filter the transmission data to use the most accurate satellite transmission. Maia’s direct route is approximately 450km, the unfiltered transmission route is 781km, and with some filtering of data, we estimate that she has travelled approximately 600km”.
She said it was quite common to see turtles in the wild with partial and even complete flipper amputations, most often due to shark bites or entanglements.
Kunz said the SAAMBR team was optimistic about returning her to the ocean. They did not expect however that she was going to be an absolute swimming sensation. By Christmas day she was already in the warm and beautiful Maputo Bay, an area she seems to really enjoy as she is still criss crossing this protected site now known as the Maputo National Park, which is seen as an extension of the Isimangaliso Wetland Park”.
Daily News