Rescuing freezing animals, for one thing.
The patient, rescued by a concerned stranger, had been in the hospital for almost a year since suffering in the cold around last Christmas.
She had been eating well and gaining weight after her medical team — among the best around — introduced her to some new foods. But it had been a lonely sojourn despite plenty of visitors She was the only patient in the hospital and her name, if she has one, remains unknown.
Still, the green sea turtle was seemingly content last week. She paddled slowly around her personal pool, occasionally surfacing to take a bite of a lettuce leaf or a half-moon nibble of a zucchini slice.
The turtle was being cared for at the Texas State Aquarium’s $16 million Wildlife Rescue Center in Corpus Christi, which opened in March. The nonprofit aquarium, which opened in 1990, has long been one of the region’s most popular tourist attractions, drawing more than half a million visitors each year. And the new rescue center, Texas’ largest, promises to raise the aquarium’s education and conservation efforts to new heights just as climate change increases the potential for more large-scale rescue events.
“I would say the big numbers (of rescues) are driven by cold weather,” said aquarium President and CEO Jesse Gilbert, adding that his team is ready to work at scale. “We engineered a (rescue) basket to lift a ton — literally, a ton — of turtles.”
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Along with a massive pool inside the building, Gilbert said, the center can care for several thousand turtles, birds and other marine animals at once, if such a need arises, as it did during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri.
The 26,000-square-foot facility also features a surgery center, a hospital wing, and an emergency operations center co-owned by the aquarium and several state agencies that can be used during a natural disaster to coordinate wildlife rescue efforts across Texas. The building can withstand a Category 5 hurricane and is equipped with emergency generators, and the aquarium is continuously staffed by marine biologists and others who care for the animals every day.
Read on for more, it’s good stuff. You can go here to learn more from them as well. The winter outlook for Texas is that near normal temperatures are likely, but I doubt anyone is going to dismiss the possibility of another freeze. Whatever happens, the Aquarium should be ready to handle it.