Fida

Fida’s Story

Fida was found floating on the surface. She was weak and struggling to breathe and swim. She had also lost her right front flipper and half of her rear right flipper where her bone was bone exposed. On arrival at the Rescue Center, she appeared much brighter than expected but she was dehydrated and her shell was covered with red algae.

We took X-rays and blood samples on the day of her arrival and started a treatment plan based on the findings. We will focus on pain control, prevention of infection, regular wound debridement and cleaning. We also will continue fluid therapy to keep her hydrated and. Since her already amputated flippers are healing well, the approach we have decided on is to leave her with as much stump as possible, especially since the lesions are on the same side. We will be repeating diagnostics fortnightly to monitor her.

14 August 2022
Fida underwent a deep wound debridement procedure this week; small amount of exposed bones were gently trimmed off. She is now much more active than before and chases after her food while being trained to turn in both directions during feeding. Despite having lost both right flippers, she can still swim speedily in a straight line.

21 August 2022
Fida is active and bright, chasing after her food and doing well during dive and swim training. She can turn in both directions, but has made no attempt to dive yet.

28 August 2022
Remarkably, Fida, even with only 2 flippers, continues to impress us with her willingness to learn to dive and swim in straight lines. She also has learnt how to turn both ways. We are glad to see her adapting.

4 September 2022
Fida was ‘upgraded’ to a medium tank this week and it has really encouraged her to dive. She is submerging her whole carapace which is a huge improvement from when she first arrived. She loves her food. We are hoping that when the weather clears up, we can take her for a sea swim and see how she copes in the waves.

11 September 2022
The wounds on Fida’s right front stump and right rear stump continue to heal well. We do wound debridement on a weekly basis and see improvement each time. She has shown interest in diving but attempts were unsuccessful so far. We continue to train Fida in swimming in a straight line and to turn in both directions during feeding time. On a positive note, her repeat X-rays this week revealed that there was no significant change or deterioration at both stumps on the right side.

18 September 2022
The wounds on Fida’s right front and right rear stumps continue to improve, however, she remains positively buoyant most of the time. She has otherwise been adapting to swimming very well without her right flippers, and she also responds well to training during feeding.

25 September 2022
Fida’s wounds are healing well. She is navigating fine and adapting well to the use of her flippers on the left side. 

2 October 2022
Fida started diving this week!  She successfully submerged her carapace and stayed below the water surface for a few seconds, which was a huge achievement compared to the day she arrived. We have adjusted her diet plan to help her build some muscle mass and strength to help with her diving!

9 October 2022
Fida has been diving consistently with encouragement during feeding time over the last week. We plan to take her out for a sea swim as an enrichment and also to stimulate her natural diving behavior.

16 October 2022
Fida has now taught herself to dive to the bottom of her tank–which is 2 metres deep! We have also been taking her on sea swims and she is successfully diving in the wild, even if it is quite shallow.

23 October 2022
Fida is making slow progress with her diving; with only two flippers, this is much harder work than having 3 or 4 flippers.
She dives for her food but otherwise is swimming on the top of the water. Her appetite is good and she is gaining weight.
She currently does not need any medications.

30 October 2022
Fida stopped diving in her tank over the past week. While she needs more encouragement during feeding time, she may need more swim sessions in the sea to continuously stimulate and improve her diving skills.

6 November 2022
Fida’s progress is slow when it comes to diving as she finds it very exhausting with just two flippers to get herself submerged. She continues to eat well and we encourage her to dive where possible.

13 November 2022
Fida was slowly starting to dislike the food we offered and now she only really eats prawns! There is no improvement in her diving abilities at the moment. 

20 November 2022
Fida is doing well, just happily eating and enjoying the company of our guests and volunteers at the Rescue Centre.

27 November 2022
Fida is gaining strength and eating well. Her diving is improving but she’s still popping back up again when she makes it to the bottom to eat.

4 December 2022
Fida continues to try and dive for food, however, she remains positively buoyant. 

10/18 December 2022
Still no improvement for Fida. She continues to try and dive for food but is still positively buoyant.

25 December 2022
Fida continues to try and dive for food, however she remains positively buoyant. We’ll take her out for a sea swim for some enrichment next week.

1 January 2023
Fida, our youngest olive ridley, has shown some signs of improvement this month. She is now able to dive for food to the bottom of her tank! However, she still really struggles to do anything quickly, as she is missing both flippers from the same side.

12 February 2023
Fida is clinically stable and has a great appetite. She is very curious and loves to munch on cuttlefish bones. In the beginning of the month, she was spending a lot of time diving down and foraging for her food off the floor – specially if crabs or prawns were involved. However, she gets tired very quickly and more recently has been just buoyant most of the time as diving demands a lot from her. We are still taking her out on sea swims to offer her a more exciting environment.

12 March 2023
Fida Continues to have a great appetite and being active. Since she is a very curious turtle, we have added new environmental enrichment devices in her tank to promote interaction.

9 April 2023
Fida is our most curious and playful turtle. She is very active and enjoys interacting with the enrichment devices we often place in her tank.

1 May 2023
Fida continues to be visitors’ favourite. She is active and interacting lots with the enrichment devices in her tank.

13 June 2023
Fida has been doing great! She loves to scrub her shell on the brushes we place in her tank and is crazy about prawns.

9 July 2023
We have started Fida on Targeted External Weight Therapy. She continues to be a favourite amongst our visitors, especially the children.

13 August 2023
Fida continues her dive training – specially during feeding sessions given she is so food oriented! Her X-rays and blood work are now normal, so we are now just focusing on behavioural training and physiotherapy to assure she can start diving.

12 September 2023
We have slowly been increasing and readjusting Fida’s Targeted External Weight Therapy to improve her diving skills. She has been responding well, although slowly. Therefore, we are using buoys to sink her food, motivating her to dive during feeding sessions. Apart from that she continues to be a healthy patient.

10 October 2023
We are continuing Fida’s Targeted External Weight Therapy and dive training to improve her diving skills. She is responding well and we have slightly increased the depth that she is diving to during her buoy feeding sessions. As always, Fida remains a healthy patient with very good motivation for food.

31 October 2023
Fida’s monthly medical check up shows she continues to be a very healthy little bug. She is likely the most determined patient we have ever seen at the Rescue Centre. Fida is very food motivated and thus her dive training, which combines Targeted External Weight Therapy with feeding enrichment devices, truly motivates her to dive down to reach for her food. Slowly we have been yielding positive results!

13 November 2023
This has been a really important week for Fida! She has now been transferred to our North Malé Atoll Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Centre at One & Only Reethi Rah Resort, her new home for the foreseeable future. At this facility, Fida will have a very large enclosure just for herself and be under the care of Philippa, our sea turtle biologist based there, and the veterinary team’s direct supervision.

Fida will continue her special buoyancy therapy programme that includes targeted external weights (placed in very deliberate points of her carapace) and submersible buoy feeding. She has made considerable progress since her therapy started and we are very hopeful she will continue to improve As this new chapter begins, we are giving Fida the very best chance possible to be returned to her ocean home.

12 December 2023
After a few days in her new home, Fida began to fully submerge herself for longer periods of time and even tried reaching the bottom of her tank! We are very excited for Fida and hope to see more improvement in the coming months.

8 January 2024
Fida has been a resident at our North Malé Atoll Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Centre at One & Only Reethi Rah Resort for over two months now. Her progress in dive training has been impressive, thanks to our tailored approach combining Targeted External Weight Therapy and buoy feeding sessions. To further challenge her, we’ve successfully lowered the feeding buoys, encouraging Fida to dive even deeper. Her strong food motivation has allowed her to adapt seamlessly to these new buoy heights, exemplified by her recent attempt to retrieve a fallen piece of fish from the bottom of the tank. We remain hopeful for her ongoing improvement!

11 February 2024
Fida had her quarterly health assessment recently – which she passed with flying colours. She continues her dive training with the use of Targeted External Weight Therapy and buoy feeding sessions. Since Fida is very food motivated, her feeding sessions are always fun to watch.

We recently increased the intensity of her dive training and are looking forward to see how she will progress. She now also has brand new covers on the corners of her tank, so she can ‘hide’ if she wishes; however, she still loves to work on her tan lounging in the sun in front of the window.

12 March 2024
Fida has shown great dedication to her dive training this past month and we have successfully lowered her feeding buoys by 2 cm. Since she is very food motivated, we are looking forward to seeing her work hard and go deeper into the water column. Additionally, we have introduced partial covers to both her large and small tanks, providing her with space to ‘hide’ whenever she wishes to. Fida particularly enjoys going under them for her evening siestas.

Moreover, we put a floating square as an Environmental Enrichment Device (EED) in her tank, for her to interact with under supervision. She adores her floating square, often pushing it around the tank and rubbing her carapace against it.

7 April 2024
Fida continues to be a favourite amongst guests and an ambassador for sea turtles’ plea against the threat of ghost nets. Given how food motivated Fida is, we are challenging her further during her feeding sessions with submersible buoys that have been lowered some more in the water column this month. We are also exploring her dietary preferences, which we have adjusted to provide her with the best nutritious options. She is responding well to it, keeping a steady weight, and growing.

12 May 2024
Fida has been delighted with the past calm weather. She particularly enjoys interacting with her Environmental Enrichment Device (EED), the famous square, which she engages with daily by carrying it around and rubbing against. Her appetite is always good, and her food motivation has enabled us to reduce the heights of her buoys by 2cm. We plan to persist with her dive training regimen, aiming to further reduce her buoys heights in the coming months.

9 June 2024
Fida continues to win the hearts of all the visitors to the North Malé Rehabilitation Centre. She was not happy about the short bout of bad weather this month, but she continues to impress everyone with her diving abilities during her subversive buoy feeding sessions.

7 July 2024
We conducted a reassessment of Fida’s Targeted External Weight Therapy, and are happy to report that she is showning improvement. She continues to reach her submersible buoys during feeding sessions and is now occasionally making small dives across her tank.

11 August 2024
Fida adjusted well to the recent reduction in her Targeted External Weight Therapy and remains highly motivated during feeding sessions. Over the past month, we have reduced her buoy lengths twice and she continues to excel, showing progress in her diving abilities. She is now enjoying exploring her newly painted tank and enthusiastically interacts with her environmental enrichment devices.

8 September 2024
Fida has made remarkable progress over the last month. We adjusted her buoys multiple times to maintain a challenging regimen, and we also made additional modifications to her Targeted External Weight Therapy with outstanding results. We have consistently adapted her submersible buoy feeding sessions to keep her motivated and engaged. We are extremely proud of how far she has come and hope she continues to improve.

6 October 2024
Fida has been demonstrating excellent diving skills over the past month! We are continuing her diving therapy with submersible buoys and she has been steadily increasing both her time spent underwater and her swimming speed. Over the past month we have gradually reduced the length of her buoys, allowing her to dive deeper than ever before. Moving forward we will focus on increasing her swimming duration and incorporating quick changes in direction to further refine her skills.

10 November 2024
Fida has been making steady progress with her diving over the past few weeks, so we have reduced her Targeted External Weight Therapy even further. She adapted well to the reduced weight and continues to show improvements both in the time spent feeding while submerged and the depth of her dives. We aim to keep reducing her weights and we will work on finding new ways to stimulate her with different Environmental Enrichment Devices.

8 December 2024
Fida made significant progress last month! We were able to gradually reduce her Targeted External Weight Therapy (TEWT), eventually discontinuing it completely! Fida adapted quickly and is showing great improvement in her balance control. She continues to impress us with her motivation during feeding sessions and we aim to develop this interest in diving beyond feeding times.

12 January 2025
Fida has continued to make strong progress this month and has adapted well to the removal of her Targeted External Weight Therapy weights. She is showing greater agility in the water while swimming and diving for her food, so we continue to work on extending her time spent submerged during feeding sessions. We have now put up a new partial cover over Fida´s large tank to provide more shade and shelter.

9 February 2025
Fida is enjoying her new partial tank cover, choosing to take shelter underneath it from the sun and rain, and using it as a nice place to hide! Over the last month, she has been consistently diving and swimming, so we continue to try to push her and extend the time spent submerged during her feeding sessions. In the next few weeks we will add some additional enrichment devices to her tank to encourage her to explore underwater outside of the feeding sessions.

9 March 2025
Fida has experienced some changes over the last month, as we began improvement work on her regular tank, resulting in her spending most of the month in our smaller tank. Work is now well underway and we are looking forward to returning her to her usual spot soon, once it is all painted and looking fresh! Fida has taken these variations from her normal routine in her stride and continues to eat well in the smaller tank, even showing interest in diving down outside of feeding sessions!

6 April 2025
We have successfully returned Fida to the large tank, following its painting and refurbishment. She is settling back in well and we have seen her swimming and making small dives around the tank. She is also starting to interact with the buoy during feeding sessions again. It may take her some time to return to her previous diving abilities in the larger tank, so during feeding sessions we will assess her progress while encouraging her to dive and spend more time underwater.