Saving a Sea Turtle

The amount of plastic in our oceans is growing, the damage it is doing can be irreversible and life threatening for marine species vital to our eco system.

This is the story of a sea turtle named April, who was injured by a plastic bag.

April travelled from the Turtle Rehabilitation Centre at Four Seasons Resort in the Maldives to her new home in Scotland due to the conservation efforts of the SEA LIFE Trust and Maldives-based environmental agencies, Reefscapers and Marine Savers.

Sea turtles can live until they are 80 years old and are known to migrate many thousands of miles in their lifetime. But when this Olive Ridley sea turtle was discovered in the Raa Atoll in the Maldives, she was floating on the surface tangled up in ghost netting with a plastic bag around her neck.

She was missing one flipper and the other front flipper have been wounded by friction from the plastic bag. An x-ray also revealed she was suffering from a lung infection, with possible tears in her lungs.

Plastic pollution in our oceans is nothing new, researchers first documented the issue 50 years ago, but the problem has grown so extensively that now over 700 marine species are known to ingest plastic on a daily basis.

Around 8.8 million tons of plastic waste enters the marine environment each year, that’s equivalent of a lorry load of plastic rubbish dumped into the ocean every minute.

At the Turtle Rehabilitation Centre in the Maldives, the injured Olive Ridley turtle, named April, received lifesaving treatment to nurse her back to health. But despite the loving care she received, her ongoing buoyancy issues made a return to the wild impossible, and she was found a specialist homes overseas to live out her hopefully long and happy life.

April now lives at SEA LIFE, Loch Lomond in Scotland.

Kathryn Angel, SEA LIFE Loch Lomond’s General Manager says: “We are passionate about working with teams overseas to protect and rehabilitate injured and stranded sea creatures. We’re so proud of the hard work and dedication our team has to ensure the magnificent creatures in our waters are cared for and live a happy danger-free life, and April is yet another example of this. We’re so excited to introduce her to our guests once she’s completely comfortable with her new surroundings.”

Littering, dumping and inefficient waste disposal in landfills has caused up to 2.2 million tons of plastic – including everything from plastic bottles and straws to packaging – to “leak” into the environment each year.