Jacob

Israel's sea turtle monitoring program

A project of Israel Nature and Parks Authrity.

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Species: Green Turtle
Life Stage: Adult
Gender: Male
Release Date: 2018-06-08 05:00:00
Release Location:
Last Location: 2018-08-13 18:37:04

Background

Yaakov (Jacob) is an adult male green sea turtle. He was found by a good samaritan called Yaakov (hence the turtles' name) on the shore barely moving. Yaakov had no visible injuries but when we placed him in the tank at the center we noticed him floating unevenly, hinting that his injury could be related to his lungs. A CT scan revealed Pneumothorax, one of his lungs had air outside of it which was pressing and shrinking the lung. This explained why he was floating on his side. We asume he might have suffered from motor vessel injury that caused an inner tissue trauma. In order to help Yaakov swim more evenly, we connected weights to his outer shell for balance. The balance helped him to go back to normality by eating and resting on the bottom and breathing without inhaling water to his lungs. After few months of rehabilitation, Yaakov balance is normal without the help of the weights and he is ready to go home.