The Houston Zoo said<\/a> Rhossi arrived in Texas on Aug. 10 and is now receiving care from its veterinary team as they work toward eventually returning him to the wild.<\/p>\n
\nFrom a Welsh beach to Houston <\/p>\n
Rhossi’s unlikely journey began in December 2023 when a dog discovered the tiny turtle on a beach in Wales.<\/p>\n
He weighed just 2 pounds at the time and was cold-stunned after being exposed to the dangerously cold waters of the North Atlantic. The team at Anglesey Sea Zoo took him in and spent the next two years nursing him back to health. And Rhossi did a lot of growing along the way. The Houston Zoo said he now tips the scales at 46 pounds.<\/p>\n
Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are native to the Gulf of Mexico, but the zoo said powerful ocean currents can occasionally sweep the turtles across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Getting Rhossi back required plenty of coordination. His journey included a helicopter trip from Wales to Heathrow Airport before his transatlantic flight to Houston.<\/p>\n
When he landed in Texas, Houston Zoo sea turtle staff and a veterinarian assessed him at the airport before taking him to the zoo. He was then placed in a deep-water tank to acclimate to his new surroundings.<\/p>\n
The zoo said several organizations helped make the journey possible, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA, Anglesey Sea Zoo, Texas State Aquarium and Welsh helicopter pilot Darren Briggs.<\/p>\n
Rhossi’s return to the Gulf will now take a little longer than hoped as his veterinary team addresses possible lingering pneumonia. But after 5,000 miles and two years, he is closer to home than he has been in a very long time.<\/p>\n
Rhossi underwent a comprehensive medical exam led by senior veterinarian Dr. Joe Flanagan, who briefly came out of retirement to help treat him. The team checked Rhossi’s organ function, eyes, mouth, shell and flippers. X-rays and a CT scan were also used to examine his lungs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rhossi was found cold-stunned on a Welsh beach in 2023. Now, the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-408554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}