An injured sea turtle whose two left flippers had to be amputated is swimming again with the help of a new prosthetic fin designed like a fighter jet's wings.
Called "Hofesh" after the Hebrew word for "freedom," the turtle has two stumps after he was found badly injured. In 2009, the green sea turtle was brought in by a fishing net near Israel's Mediterranean coast, The Associated Press reported.
Too damaged to be saved, his two left flippers had to be amputated. After the rescue, an Israeli team worked to find ways to help Hofesh swim again.
They first tried putting a diver's fin on the animal, Yaniv Levy, director of Israel's Sea Turtle Rescue Center, told the AP. But the device didn't offer much assistance and got in the way when Hofesh attempted to swim as usual.
It was Shlomi Gez, an industrial design student at Jerusalem's Hadassah College, who came to Hofesh's rescue. Hearing about the turtle's plight on the Internet, Gez designed a prosthetic fin similar to a fish's dorsal fin. Hofesh's swimming improved somewhat with the aid of the new fin; however, he still struggled to emerge to the water's surface properly.
Gez eventually found the answer in the design of Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-22 Raptor warplane. Developing a prosthetic with two fins, Gez created a device similar to the fighter jet that was attached to Hofesh on Thursday, according to the AP.
"I discovered it worked better than one fin on the back," Gez told the AP. "With two fins, he keeps relatively balanced, even above the water."
While the contraption enables Hofesh to move freely through his tank, the sea turtle would never survive in the wild.
But the team believes he will be able to contribute to his native habitat in other ways. Hofesh lives in a tank with a blind female sea turtle named Tsurit, and both turtles are estimated to be between the ages of 20 and 25, close to sexual maturity. The hope is that they will produce baby sea turtles to be released back into the ocean.
"We have great plans for this guy," Levy told the AP. "They will never go back to the wild, but their offspring will be released the minute they hatch and go immediately into the sea and live normally in the wild."
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