Jorgesplendid Sixty -year -old marine turtle, after 41 years in captivity and its over one hundred kilograms of weight, she returned to swim free in the ocean. It is the first specimen to succeed after having lived so long away from the water of the oceans in which she was born. The long and complicated rehabilitation, three years long, in which he learned for the second time in his life to hunt crabs and snails lives and swimming against the current for the second time. But he made it. Today, free and monitored, he has already traveled 3,000 kilometers in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, demonstrating reintegration is possible, and that even those who have had the misfortune of ending up trapped in a network, transported to a zoo, forced to an unnatural life in a shallow tub, can do it. In some way Jorge is showing us, while day after day he continues to send us signs of his vitality through a telemeter attached to the carapace, that reporting in nature animals that have been deprived of their freedom is not only possible, but dutiful.
The case of the KSHAMENK ORCA proposes the question that everyone sooner or later asked ourselves. When does life suffer and when you live? And as men, do we have the right to decide on the life of other species or is it only our narcissism that chooses?
Forty years in captivity in a swimming pool
His return to the waters of the Atlantic Ocean on 11 April 2025, is only the last step of a long joint action of many different forces, Starting with the 60 thousand who signed one petition To ensure that this caretta Caretta would return free, and come on Three lawyers MarÃa Aguilar, Vanesa Lucer and Oscar Alejandro Melladowho presented an application to the Court of Mendoza, to defend his essential rights: “to life, freedom, physical integrity and dignity of these animals”.
Jorge, left trapped in a fishing network in 1984off Argentina, had since lived in an aquarium, far from its natural environment, eating hard -boiled eggs and boiled meat And getting used to living in a 20,000 liter tub just half a meter deep. An marked fate, which had destined it to become tourist attraction, loved by the children who could see her in the great aquarium of Mendoza, on the Andes.
The petition moved the waters, the work of the lawyers made the rest. The Municipality of Mendoza was sensitive to the instances of liberation and involved who could, scientifically, study the world of doing what no one had ever dared to do: to return to the open sea a turtle that had spent more than half of his life in captivity. Researchers of theAquarium of Mar del Plataof Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences and of theMarine and coastal research institute of the National University of Mar del Plata. The challenge was to have Jorge recover his natural instinct towards hunting, towards the sea, towards freedom.
On the stage of the VESAK2025, the Buddhist celebration in Milan, the great zoologist and primates scholar told his life dedicated to the study and protection of chimpanzees, their territory, of the communities that live there. Since he read Tarzan as a child to his first trip to Africa as “girl in the jungle”, until the choice to become an activist for nature. So with its foundation and the project for young people, at 91 years old, Jane Goodall tells what an indomitable spirit can do and teaches us not to lose hope
Learn again to swim and hunt
In three years Jorge has learned again to swim in salted water Just as the ocean water is salted where she would return to swim. The percentage of salt dissolved in water was gradually increased, verifying how its blood reacted. Then, Transferred to a much more welcoming and deep swimming pool in the Plata Sea, filled with sea water and maintained at a controlled temperature between 20 and 24 ° CJorge learned again to swim in deep waters from which to re -emerge, from time to time, to breathe. Because this would have done once you return free to swim, immerse yourself and re -emerge to her.
Finally, it was the turn of the small crabs and snails which slowly replaced the hard -boiled eggs and boiled meat. Only that Jorge was taught to earn them with his hunt, going to look for and find in the ravines of the swimming pool. Also in this case, reproducing at least in part what he would then have done daily in the open sea. The researchers saw her learn to compete for food with other animals inserted specifically in the swimming pool and saw her learn to contrast artificial currents Create specifically to reproduce the marine ones.
“The last show, the story of a liberation” is the film produced by Lav which will arrive at the cinema on 7, 8, 9 April. It tells of a 10 -year long process that led to the greatest liberation of animals from a circus. But it also tells us about our humanity
On a ship to the open sea
When Jorge was ready, in April, his return to the open sea was celebrated with an event aboard a ship belonging to the Argentine naval prefecture which brought it to the point of its release, in the open sea. But it is his daily journey, monitored by distance from Alejandro Saubidetthe marine biologist who guided his re -education, has more enthusiastically monitored the researchers. Because the daily signs he sends indicate that he is going in the right direction: towards Brazil, towards the hot waters, where he probably was born. Or at least that’s what he thinks Laura Prosdocimithe researcher at the laboratory of ecology, conservation and marine mammals of the Argentine museum of natural sciences, which has hypothesized, based on genetic studies, which Jorge comes from a population of turtles in the Praia Do Forte area. So Jorge is tornado from where it came. From those nesting areas he had known during the first years of his life and that now, I resume his migratory route Interrupted how much years ago, he is returning to search.
A unique case of return to wild nature
Jorge is truly unique: no turtle before her was able to return to live free after having lived a lot of time in captivity. An incredible resiliencea mysterious and ancestral force that is reporting it where it would have been if these forty years had not been there. Perhaps someone might say that thanks to captivity it was saved from plastic waste, wild fishing, the propellers of the boats, the effects of climate change, the decrease in food and the erosion of the beaches that afflict its free sisters in the seas of the whole planet every day. But Jorge did nothing but show that, despite everything, free is better.
Source: Vanity Fair
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