The recent holidays looked a little different for the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi. Several of the aquarium’s Wildlife Rescue Team members spent…
The recent holidays looked a little different for the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi. Several of the aquarium’s Wildlife Rescue Team members spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning working overtime to save cold-stunned sea turtles. But this time, the aquarium and its rescue team were prepared. In a matter of days, thanks to our ongoing response to the 2021 winter storm, the aquarium managed to admit, rehabilitate and release 300 cold-stunned sea turtles.
Cold-stunning is just what it sounds like: a condition in which sea turtles become weak and lethargic from exposure to cold. Cold-stunned turtles lose their ability to swim.
This wasn’t our first cold-stunning rodeo. During the famous winter storm of 2021, a much larger cold-stunning event made us aware that we needed to be ready for large-scale wildlife emergencies. That year, the aquarium admitted a record number of cold-stunned sea turtles, making national headlines. The rescue center’s main pool had more than 1,000 rescued turtles recovering and getting back to an average body temperature. A few days later, 904 of those turtles were released back into the ocean. Our team’s remarkable ability to adapt and respond to emergencies of this scale is why this rescue program is leading the way in wildlife rescue across the country. Shortly after the historic response in 2021, the aquarium started to create a larger wildlife disaster response plan.
The aquarium staff became intensely focused on designing a system that could be activated quickly, could be transported and operated at a remote location, and most important save thousands of sea turtles. One evening in the summer of 2021, I saw a commercial for a flood control device and thought, if the system can keep water out of buildings, maybe it could be reverse-engineered to keep water in. Within a few days, my team was working with a flood control company to design the country’s largest aquatic animal rescue system.
Loggerhead sea turtles are aggressive toward each other and must be housed in separate spaces to remain safe. We adapted the flood control system into two large pools that were able to hold up to 24 sea turtles each, with dividers to create individual spaces of approximately 60 square feet per turtle.
This past summer the system was put into action for another historic response to a large loggerhead sea turtle stranding event. Between April and September of 2022, more than 400 loggerhead strandings were recorded in Texas, which is about three times as many as any previous year for this region.
Soon, the public will get more access to the important work we do here. On March 2, the aquarium will open the new Port of Corpus Christi Center for Wildlife Rescue. The center will allow visitors to witness the inspiring rehabilitation of marine mammals, sea turtles, and birds of prey while providing unparalleled state-of-the-art care for wildlife.
The grand opening coincides with the monumental 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, which establishes protections for fish and wildlife listed as threatened or endangered. Since 1995, the Wildlife Rescue Program has admitted thousands of protected, threatened and endangered species for rescue and rehabilitation, releasing more than 4,000 animals back into their natural habitat.
Texans are passionate about wildlife, and in this case, Texans are leading the way in wildlife conservation across the country. Our new flood control system has set the standard for large-scale aquatic wildlife disaster response, and we are not stopping there. Aquarium staff are working with partners in private industry, academia and government to develop new technologies that make wildlife disaster response more efficient and safer for the rescuers and ultimately rescue the wildlife faster.
Today we are operating the country’s leading coastal wildlife rescue program in one of the busiest ports by tonnage in the country. The Coastal Bend is a model for how a community can experience economic growth and have a resilient wildlife population.
Jesse Gilbert is president and chief executive of the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi. He wrote this for The Dallas Morning News.
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