After a long day of working with MASA Map cultural events, a friend and I decided to go for a walk to relieve some the pressure. As we walked the bleach in Tel Aviv we spotted something unusual at the edge of the sea. My friend thought it was a bag of trash. I thought maybe a satellite or something.  I know the beach, and whatever that was wasn't supposed to be there.

Walking closer, to our surprise, we found it to be a Green Sea Turtle. Knowing that they an endanger species, I was amazed.

Looking closer I saw she was missing her front fin.  I found out the number of animal rescue, who told us we had to watch her until they made their way to us from north of Natanya.

While babysitting, she ended up doing several circles until she nearly made it back into the sea.  I was told not to let her go back in, so I found a big Israeli guy to put her up and set her inland more.  We ended up naming her Yonah, because we were near Yaffo and the whole rescue from the sea idea, it just made sense.

Two hours later the specialist arrived.

Yaniv, the sea turtle specialist, told sea turtles can live to be over 100.  Yonah, he estimated, was about 20-30 years old and still to young to lay eggs.  Based on the barnacles on her back Yaniv thought Yonah had been floating on the surface of the sea for about 3 months, waiting to come to shore. "You know," Yaniv siad "you just saved a tenth of a percent of the population of this kind of turtle". She is one of only 400 left in the Mediterranean.

Yonah was badly injured.  A fishing line had wrapped around both of her front fins.  One fin it was wrapped around so tight that it had cut off her circulation.  Her fin had actually fallen off.  The other would have done the same soon if she hadn't been rescued.  After being taken to the clinic, it was discovered that she also had four fishing lines inside of her.

Yonah is now doing good. Three of the four fishing line inside of her have been taken out and her lost fin will heal fine. Yaniv hopes she will be able to be released back into the wild next spring or summer.   In the meantime, I found out, two Young Judea participants here in Israel on a MASA program(click here for their story) will be taking care of Yonah while she recuperates. 

My experiences with Yonah, Yaniv, the people passing on the beach, and the Yong Judea participants has further solidified in my mind how ironic our little country of Israel is, where everyone appears to be connected in some way.  This helps give me even more passion to go back to work late at night, even when I'm exhausted.  I want show other young Jews the Israel I know.

To read more:
http://www.socyberty.com/Activism/Yonah-the-Green-Sea-Turtle.50777