Sea turtles can sometimes find themselves becoming casualties of commercial fishing, getting caught in nets. If they don’t drown, they sometimes become so injured in their struggles that death is sadly inevitable. One lucky green sea turtle in Israel has dodged a bullet, however, after receiving some space-age prosthetics from researchers out of Israel’s Sea Turtle Rescue Centre and Jerusalem’s Hadassa College.

The turtle, named “Hofesh” (Hebrew for “freedom”), was found in 2009 after a run-in with a fishing net left his two left flippers so badly mangled that amputation was the only solution. Though he survived the procedure, swimming proved nearly impossible and common diving fin prosthetics weren’t doing the job. That’s when Shlomi Gez, an industrial design student at Hadassah College went to work – and he looked to Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor fighter jet for inspiration.

After first designing a device based on a fish’s dorsal fin, he took a queue from the F-22 and designed a prosthetic that resembles the jet’s tail rudder, with two fins spread slightly apart and angled. It worked better than anyone could have ever hoped.

“I discovered it worked better than one fin on the back,” Gez explained. “With two fins, he keeps relatively balanced, even above the water.”

Though Hofesh will never be fit to return to the wild, all is not lost. He shares a tank with a blind female named Tsurit, and researchers are hopeful that the two will mate. Given how endangered green sea turtles are, the species needs all the help it can get. If they do indeed breed, researchers say the offspring would be released immediately and live normally in the wild.