The year was 1999, and a university student named Yaniv Levy, majoring in marine biology, was taking a walk on the sands of Mikhmoret beach north of Netanya when he happened upon a large sea turtle, called a loggerhead, whose limb was injured and who had been hurt by a fishhook.

Levy named the loggerhead Mazal, Hebrew for luck, and her successful rehabilitation was the seed of a dream. Later that year, Levy set up a “temporary” turtle treatment center nearby in collaboration with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

Some 27 years and NIS 30 million ($9.5 million) later, Israel’s new purpose-built National Sea Turtle Rescue Center is set to open its doors to the public, with Levy, now a turtle ecologist, as its director. It’s located in the Alexander Stream National Park, not far from where Levy found Mazal.

The facility, which will open to visitors in February, is funded and run by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, with a handful of donations. It has a staff of 10, including management, experts in emergency medicine and rehabilitation, and a research assistant who also manages turtle nests on the adjacent beach. The employees are supplemented by around 100 volunteers.

The center also represents a new frontier: In addition to caring for the injured animals, it will house the world’s only breeding program for green sea turtles.

“There are fewer than 20 rehabilitation centers like ours,” Levy said. “But we have the world’s only breeding nucleus. We are constantly learning and taking notes. Nobody in the world has the endocrinological information that we have.”

To date, Levy has had the luxury of treating and studying turtles in private. With the influx of visitors, that will all change. “My life will be quite different,” he said.

The population of sea turtles in the Mediterranean Sea is severely endangered, mainly due to intensive hunting in the 1930s, according to the parks authority. During the British Mandate, some 2,000 green sea turtles were hunted annually for their meat and shells on the coasts of what would become Israel.

Thanks to decades of conservation efforts, the global population of green sea turtles has increased to an estimated 85,000 to 90,000 sexually mature females,  leading the International Union for........

© The Times of Israel