‘Swimming sensation’ Maia the Turtle makes it to Mozambique with just one flipper

With one less flipper and in just eight days, a young, courageous green turtle called Maia has travelled more than 600km from South Africa to Mozambique.

In December 2020, she was found stranded on the beach in the Isimangaliso Wetland Park in northern KwaZulu-Natal. A large woven plastic sack was wrapped around her left front flipper, which caused severe necrosis and the partial loss of that flipper. 

On 13 December, Maia was released in the Isimangaliso Wetland Park, after two years of rehabilitation at the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR) Sea Turtle Hospital at uShaka Sea World.

Her carers never anticipated that Maia was going to be an “absolute swimming sensation”, but by 21 December, she had made her way up to Mozambique “at an average of a half marathon swim a day”. 

By Christmas, she was already in the warm Maputo Bay, where she is still criss-crossing this protected site, now known as the Maputo National Park, which is viewed as an extension of the Isimangaliso Wetland Park.