Fakieh Aquarium to return turtle back to sea after treatment

For about 18 months, Jay Bravo and a dedicated team of sea life experts nursed a turtle identified as a Hawksbill, a critically endangered species that has seen its numbers decline by 80 percent over the last century. The turtle is back to perfect health with her weight having tripled to 50 kg. and ready to head back into the sea.
With a plan to put her back into the Red Sea scheduled for mid-November, their biggest concern is not whether she will be able to cope with the wild life at sea after having been confined to the aquarium’s tanks; “What scares us the most is the probability of her mistaking a plastic bag for a jellyfish,” said Bravo.
The Hawksbill’s main diet is jelly fish, which look very similar to discarded plastic bags underwater, he explained. “With Jeddah’s shores so notoriously polluted with plastic bags, it’s a major concern,” he said. “It only takes one plastic bag to kill her.”
This is the first of two concerns about the turtle’s survivability, the other being her getting fished out of the sea again and sold off as food, explains Jamil Attar, executive director at Fakieh Leisure and Entertainment Group, Tarfeeh Fakieh.
While the aquarium’s rescue of the turtle is an important and inspiring story, the fate of Hawksbill turtle population in the Red Sea is cause for alarm, he added.
Sea turtles, in general, have existed for more than 100 million years, and the Hawksbill, in particular, plays an extremely important role in the Red Sea eco-system, especially as it pertains to the sea’s reefs. Some 1,200 marine species live along the reefs and the extinction of the endangered Hawksbill would have a devastating effect, Fakieh said.