By late Tuesday, volunteers working with Sea Turtle, Inc., a local rescue group, had transported more than 3,500 comatose turtles for rehabilitation at the town’s convention center. But Wendy Knight, the executive director of Sea Turtle, Inc., fears that hundreds of those turtles rescued in Texas may have already succumbed to the cold. Shelters in Austin and the Texas Panhandle pleaded with the public for generators and scrambled to defrost wells. Sanjuana Zavala, a spokeswoman for Sea Turtle, Inc., said green sea turtles live year-round in the Laguna Madre, a salty lagoon sandwiched between the mainland and barrier islands on Texas’s Gulf Coast. In a normal year, volunteers with Sea Turtle, Inc. might rescue anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred cold-stunned turtles, warming them inside the group’s rescue center.

Source: Washington Post February 17, 2021 12:01 UTC