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A rare Kemp’s ridley turtle was rescued from a Welsh beach nearly 5,000 from its normal Caribbean home.
The endangered turtle was found by a family strolling on the beach in Clywd and was barely alive.
Ash and Samatha James reported the find to the British Divers Marine Life Rescue charity who collected the turtle suffering ‘cold shock’ which they took to Anglesey Sea Zoo where it will be nursed back to health and hopefully returned to the Gulf of Mexico. It was thought it was blown across the Atlantic by Storm Arwen.
‘We thought it was dead,’ said Samatha. ‘It was astonishing to find such an amazing creature on our local beach.’
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The Kemp’s ridey is the smallest, rarest and most endangered of the seven species of marine turtles. It is listed by the ICUN as critically endangered.
There have been 72 Kemp’s ridley turtles recorded as turning up in the UK on the British Isles & Republic of Ireland ‘TURTLE’ Database since records began in 1748 – however, most of these have been found dead.
The ‘really poorly’ creature has been taken into the care of Anglesey Sea Zoo, where staff have been monitoring it around-the-clock, and slowly bringing it up to temperature, degree by degree.
