Sea turtle to carry ashes of Texan who devoted life to saving species

PORT ARANSAS, Texas

— A rescued green sea turtle will be released this weekend back into the Gulf of Mexico, carrying the ashes of a selftaught Texas oceanographer who founded the rehabilitation centre that nursed it back to health.

Thousands attended a ceremony Saturday that effectively allows Tory Amos, who devoted his life to helping the endangered reptiles, to do so once more in death.

His final voyage comes on a stretch of beach named in his honour.

Amos, 80, died of complications from prostate cancer on Sept. 4, mere days after Harvey roared ashore as a fearsome Category 4 hurricane. It caused extensive damage to the Animal Rehabilitation Keep for ailing sea turtles and aquatic birds that Amos opened nearly four decades ago.

But the turtles there weathered the storm well — as their counterparts in the wild also appear to have done, scientists say.

An early hatching season meant most turtles headed to sea before the storm arrived, with their eggs already hatched rather than lying on the beach to be subsumed. Also, few turtles became stranded inland as Harvey pulled the tide far out and, since the punishing winds and rains subsided, only a relatively small number has washed back onshore or been found among storm debris.

“This certainly could have been worse,” said Tim Tristan, executive director of the Texas Sealife Center, a non-profit rescue and rehabilitation facility in Corpus Christi, close to where Harvey first made landfall Aug. 25.

Five of the world’s seven sea turtle species are found in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sea turtles generally are good at avoiding hurricanes except for eggs that can be flooded or babies who are displaced from floating mats of seaweed where they feed, said Jeff George, executive director of Sea Turtle, Inc., a rescue and rehabilitation centre on South Padre Island near the Texas-Mexico border.