Saved in Velassaru Maldives tortoise released back into the wild

In late April, on the tropical island of Velassaru Maldives, a Maldives tropical resort, another incident occurred when the hotel staff rescued a sea turtle entangled in flippers in oceanic litter. Oceanic debris inflicted by currents in the Indian Ocean is regularly nailed to the home coral reefs of every Maldivian island.

Velassaru Maldives has a diving team for cleaning coral from open water debris. But in our particular case we are talking about a hotel employee who is not part of the environmental team. A guest houseboat cleaning officer noted that part of the fishing net nailed to the edge of a coral reef in waves. Nets in the Maldives catch the local population. This is a traditional centuries-old way of fishing for the inhabitants of the Maldives. Fishing in the open ocean with nets is legal fishing.

A cleaning service employee noticed that a tortoise swarmed in fragments of the net, which became entangled with flippers in the fishing line. All Maldivians have been excellent swimmers since birth. The cleaner jumped into the water, swam to the edge of the Velassaru Maldives home coral reef, and pulled ashore a huge piece of fishing net with an ocean turtle stuck in it.

For a turtle, such a salvation is a wonderful ending to the suffering, which, judging by the wounds on the fins, lasted more than one week, while the sea reptile, entangled in nets, drifted in the open ocean in the direction of ocean currents, which finally nailed it to the coast of a tropical island - Velassaru Maldives Resort. If the drift of a tortoise entangled in nets would end off the coast of an uninhabited island, it would die.

At the Velassaru Maldives Oceanic Biological Center, the turtle was given veterinary care, and a month later the reptile was released into the ocean. On this occasion, a holiday was organized at the hotel during which all guests of Velassaru Maldives were told about the importance of protecting the environment and the inadmissibility of violating the ecology of the oceans.