A month after Israel's Mediterranean coastline was polluted by crude oil in one of the worst environmental disasters in decades, the Environmental Protection Ministry announced Wednesday that the "event" was over and the state of emergency had been lifted.

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The Environmental Protection Ministry said that local authorities would continue to work on the beaches that were still not graded "blue" – meaning low-level pollution or clean – according to its beach map.

Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel said Wednesday morning, "After an especially intense month, we are moving to the next stage and continuing to support coastal authorities in their work to clean and remove the tar to allow the beaches to be fully cleaned. We thank the employees of the ministry, the local authorities, the volunteers, and the environmental groups, primarily Ecoocean, with whose help the incident was addressed quickly and effectively.

"We are continuing to work with the International Monetary Fund to demand compensation for the serious damage to Israel's beaches," Gamliel added.

A statement from the ministry noted that in the past few weeks, intensive clean-up efforts had restored 82% of the country's 101 official beaches to use.

"If we look at all the beaches, official and open, 61% are clean or have only very low levels of pollution; 36% are graded as having low-level to mid-level pollution; and only 3% of beaches are significantly pollution – mainly, Selaim Beach," the ministry said.

As of Wednesday, over 650 tons of mixed tar have been removed from the beaches, the equivalent of 83% of the pollution that washed ashore from the tanker.

The ministry also said it would work with local authorities to set up diving teams to conduct surveys to locate masses of tar underway, as well as look into the possibility of conducting an underwater cleaning campaign based on the results of those surveys.

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Nomad jellyfish (Rhopilema nomadica) are being spotted all along the Israeli coast, along with large numbers of comb jellies (Ctenophora), gelatinous creatures that resemble jellyfish but do not sting, the University of Haifa's School of Marine Sciences reports.

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The nomad jellyfish is the most common jellyfish in Israeli coastal waters. It can be identified by its blue dome and many long strings that surround its tentacles. The species is known to have arrived in the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal, but is now considered a local Mediterranean species.

The jellyfish and comb jellies are currently close to the beaches and up to a few hundred meters offshore.

Dr. Hadas Lubinevsky notes that "It seems as if the migration has started, and what we've seen thus far are only the first signs."

The current assessment is that this is the standard yearly appearance of the jellyfish occurs in the hottest months of June, July, and August. 

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The hatchling, one of 60 to be released into the wild this week, is part of a unique conservation program run by the Israeli Sea Turtle Rescue Center.

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Green turtles are endangered worldwide, the World Wildlife Fund says. Among other hazards, they are threatened by hunting, human encroachment on the beaches where they nest, and pollution of their feeding grounds offshore.

According to the Israeli rescue center, only about 20 female green turtles nest along the Israeli Mediterranean coast during a breeding season that usually lasts from May until August.

To help the turtle population, Israeli nature authorities have declared some beaches nature reserves and with the rescue center have been relocating threatened turtle nests to safe hatcheries since the 1980s.

In 2002, the rescue center went a step further and began recruiting turtles for a special breeding stock that would one day help populate the sea with their offspring, in one of the world's only such conservation programs.

The mating squad began to reach sexual maturity a few years ago and this year managed to breed, said the center's manager, Yaniv Levi. About 200 baby turtles are expected to hatch by the end of the breeding season.

"We're only at the beginning, it's the first year, and we expect that in the coming years we will be able to spawn 1,000 hatchlings a year," Levi said.

Roderic Mast, the president of the Oceanic Society and co-chair of the IUCN-SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group, said that releasing the hatchlings to the sea immediately was critical to their chances of survival.

"In terms of conservation, nothing is more important than the protection of turtles and their habitats and behaviours in the wild," Mast said in an email interview.

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