December 2011 – Landaa’s MDC have rescued 2 turtles this month. The first one, a mature female Hawksbill turtle was brought to the MDC by our divers who found the animal with a large fishing hook embedded in its throat. In less than an hour, the lucky patient was ready to be released after we extracted the hook, disinfected the wound and gave her a broad spectrum antibiotic shot. Relying on our photo-id monitoring program we noticed that the same turtle had in fact been registered in our database two months earlier, in Dhonfan reef.
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Three days later, the recreation team found Saifa, a young female Olive Ridley entangled in a fishing net. The turtle was suffering from minor lacerations on both of the two front flippers, the carapace and the plastron, and had buoyancy problems due to stress. Saifa was nursed back to health in less than a week, and is due to be released early in the New Year.
