Two years ago, a critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle was rescued from the shores of Anglesey in Wales, United Kingdom.
Spotted by a dog walker on Traeth Llydan Beach in Rhosneigr, the turtle was assumed to have gotten lost on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.
The turtle was just 9 inches long when it was discovered, making it a juvenile sea turtle. Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are the world’s rarest and most endangered sea turtle species. They are found mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and face high extinction rates due to a very restricted nesting range and egg harvesting.
It is imperative that these turtles remain in their native habitat for the best chances of species survival.
Experts at Anglesey Sea Zoo took the turtle in for rehabilitation and named him Rhossi, a nod to his origin story.
Rhossi appears to have been a survivor of cold-stunning, a form of severe hypothermia that rapidly drops a sea turtle’s internal body temperature, leading to vital signs and physical movements shutting down.
He was rehabilitated by veterinarians at the sea zoo, but then, his caretakers hit a wall.
It was something the marine life experts had experienced before, when they rescued another Kemp’s ridley sea turtle a couple of years prior, Tally. While her recovery was fairly swift, it took 20 months for Tally to be able to fly home, due to copious paperwork and complicated logistics.
Rhossi ran into similar complications.
“Once it came to preparing for Rhossi’s repatriation, we hit a wall again, and this time not to-do with the EU, but the U.S. government,” the Anglesey Sea Zoo wrote on its website.
“In January 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order that defunded many active wildlife conservation projects in the U.S. This meant that the U.S. Wildlife and Fisheries Service who had previously aided us with Tally’s release didn’t have enough funding or staff to help us for a while.”
But now, over two and a half years since he was first found, the sea zoo team now has a license to release Rhossi, and he will be on his way home to Padre Island soon.
Right now, a temperature-controlled transport crate is being built for the turtle’s flight back to the Texas coast.
Darren Briggs, a local volunteer helicopter pilot, will fly Rhossi from Anglesey to Denham Aerodrome, five miles from Heathrow International Airport.
From there, the turtle will travel by road to the airport, where Frankie Hobro, owner of the Anglesey Sea Zoo, will join him on a British Airways cargo flight to Houston.
Two renowned conservation experts have also come out of retirement to help bring Rhossi home. Dr. Joe Flanagan, a sea turtle vet, will oversee his final pre-release health checks at Houston Zoo, and Mary Kay Skoruppa, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service coordinator, will ensure the complex paperwork is completed.
It is vital that things go according to plan.
“The timing is critical and the journey time must be kept to a minimum,” a spokesperson for Anglesey Sea Zoo told The Telegraph.
“Having made a full recovery, Rhossi continues to grow and now needs to begin his journey home while he is still small enough to be transported safely in his specially designed crate.”
If all goes according to plan, Rhossi will arrive in Texas the same day of the flight and will be quickly transferred into the care of “an international team of wildlife specialists,” the spokesperson said.
“A week later, on Aug 18, he will be released into the Gulf of Mexico near Padre Island National Seashore, where many of the conservation partners who have helped make his remarkable journey possible will gather to witness his return to the sea.”
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Featured Image: Courtesy of Anglesey Sea Zoo
