An Israel Nature and Parks Authority volunteer found a wounded 600-pound leatherback sea turtle on her daily beach walk near her home Wednesday, leading to its rescue and treatment at the national emergency clinic for marine wildlife.

The turtle, which measures 6.5 feet in length and had washed up on Tel Dor beach near Haifa, is missing one limb and the other is infected following an entanglement in some fishing lines, INPA staff told Ynet. The foreign object is embedded into the animal’s flesh, requiring antibiotic treatment before it’s removed.

Leatherbacks, which are Israel’s largest reptile, are rarely sighted on its beaches. The previous sighting was in 2022 of a dead specimen, which was also found entangled in fishing lines.

“Oftentimes, well-intentioned people will try to remove such objects themselves from entangled animals, diminishing their chances of survival,” Yaniv Levi, the head of INPA’s sea turtle rescue center in Mikhmoret near Hadera, told the news site. The volunteer, Carrol Karmi of Kibbutz Nahsholim, knew this from her work with INPA, he added.

Leatherbacks, which are the fourth largest reptiles in the world, have a wide distribution, spanning the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans, but the species is considered vulnerable, with some subpopulations defined as critically endangered. They may live to be 90 and even older.

Levi was optimistic about the creature’s chances of recovery. “We give the turtles supportive treatment but they do most of the recovery work themselves. They’re very resilient creatures that can recover from serious injuries. We’ll treat it with an eye to reintroducing it to nature as soon as possible. Because this is a huge marine reptile that lives in deep seas, it has a better chance of recovering in nature than in captivity.

Karmi named the animal Dor, which means “generation” in Hebrew, for the beach where she found it. INPA is using that name to identify the animal in their records.

Image - JNS/Photo courtesy of INPA