A critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle named Rhossi touched down in Houston this week after a nearly 5,000-mile flight from the United Kingdom, the final leg of a journey that began when he washed ashore cold-stunned and barely alive on a Welsh beach in late 2023. Rhossi arrived at the Houston Zoo on Tuesday, where veterinarians ran him through a full medical workup before what is expected to be a return to the wild off the Texas coast within about a week.
The turtle's arrival marks the end of more than two and a half years of rehabilitation at Anglesey Sea Zoo, according to the Houston Chronicle. Frankie Hobro, founder and director of Anglesey Sea Zoo, accompanied Rhossi on the trip and told the paper that his eventual release will be emotional in a positive and happy way. “This is just fantastic,” Hobro said of seeing the turtle so close to freedom.
Rhossi's rescue itself has a small, unlikely hero. A local black Labrador named Meg discovered him cold-stunned on Traeth Llydan beach in Anglesey on December 13, 2023, according to the Tenby Observer. At the time, the juvenile turtle weighed under a kilogram — roughly one-twentieth of the 20 kilograms he weighed when he was cleared for his flight to Texas. Anglesey Sea Zoo, located on the island where he washed ashore, took him in and has since saved three other turtles through similar strandings.
A Custom Crate and a Careful Handoff
Getting a 20-kilogram sea turtle across the Atlantic without water takes some improvisation. Caretakers at Anglesey Sea Zoo coated Rhossi's shell in Vaseline and applied KY Jelly to his delicate skin and eyes to prevent dehydration and sunburn-like peeling during the flight, according to BBC News. The precautions matter because sea turtles lose moisture rapidly when kept out of water for extended stretches.
Before Rhossi ever reached a commercial jet, Welsh businessman and qualified helicopter pilot Darren Briggs volunteered his company's helicopter to fly the turtle in a custom temperature-controlled crate from Anglesey to Buckinghamshire, the Tenby Observer reported, sparing him roughly seven hours of road travel. From there, Rhossi boarded a British Airways cargo flight out of Heathrow Airport, with Hobro landing alongside him on a cargo-passenger plane Monday night, per the Chronicle's reporting.
Checkups, Shadows and a Wait for Radiology
Once in Houston, veterinarians performed a physical exam, X-rays, a CT scan and blood work on Rhossi Tuesday morning to make sure he was healthy enough to return to the wild, the Chronicle reported. Dr. Joe Flanagan, a former chief veterinarian at the Houston Zoo, said Rhossi had mostly positive health signs but also had flushed skin that could signal elevated anxiety — understandable, Flanagan noted, since the turtle was probably unhappy being surrounded by 15 people during the exam.
Flanagan also observed some shadows in Rhossi's X-ray radiograph that could indicate prior cases of pneumonia, a condition cold-stunned turtles are often susceptible to. The Houston Zoo expects radiology results back by Friday, with imaging under review at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago; what those results ultimately show remains an open question. Rhossi will spend the rest of the week inside a tank at the zoo's aquarium care and quarantine center while the team awaits that final word.
Following a Well-Worn Rescue Route
Rhossi is not the first Kemp's ridley to make this particular journey. Another turtle named Tally passed through the Houston Zoo on its way back to the Gulf of Mexico in 2023 after being rehabilitated at Anglesey Sea Zoo, establishing what has become something of an international rescue pipeline, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In November 2024, the Houston Zoo also received Boeier, a juvenile Kemp's ridley rescued from fishing nets off the Netherlands, running medical exams before releasing her into the Gulf.
These transfers do not happen without red tape. Moving endangered species across international borders requires strict CITES import and export permits overseen by federal wildlife agencies, per the Houston Zoo. In Rhossi's case, that process hit an unusual snag: his return to the U.S. was stalled for months in early 2025 after a White House executive order freezing foreign development assistance and federal wildlife spending temporarily suspended U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operations on international turtle repatriations, according to reporting cited by Good Good Good.
Why Gulf Stream Currents Keep Stranding Turtles in Europe
Anglesey Sea Zoo believes the Gulf Stream likely swept Rhossi across the Atlantic in the first place. Kemp's ridleys and other subtropical sea turtles experience cold-stunning when ocean temperatures drop below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, a severe hypothermic state that paralyzes their flippers and leaves them drifting helplessly, according to The Wildlife Society. Once stunned, the turtles float to the surface, where strong currents can carry them far off course into cold northern European waters, far from the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic Ocean where Kemp's ridleys typically swim, per NOAA.
The Kemp's ridley is the world's smallest sea turtle species and remains the most critically endangered sea turtle on the planet. Global populations plummeted from an estimated 40,000 nesting females filmed at Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, in 1947 to fewer than 550 by 1990, largely due to egg harvesting and commercial fishing bycatch, according to the Sea Turtle Preservation Society.
Next Stop: The Gulf of Mexico
Assuming Rhossi's radiology results clear him, the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi will pick him up from the Houston Zoo ahead of his release. His return to the wild is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, August 18, in the area of Padre Island, which serves as a primary U.S. nesting re-establishment site for Kemp's ridleys, according to the Sea Turtle Preservation Society. It has been more than two years since Rhossi was found suffering on a beach thousands of miles away — and if all goes as planned, he will soon be swimming free in the Gulf waters he was swept from as a hatchling.
