Menai was an adult female Olive Ridley turtle who cold-stranded at the bottom of our drive on the shore of the Menai Strait in November 2016 and serendipitously started our turtle rescue journey. Menai is still a record-breaking turtle as the first of her species ever recorded in the UK since records began in 1748. When Menai arrived on the beach at the bottom of our drive she was in a cold-shock coma and all but dead after a long and gruelling journey from the southern Atlantic. Our team here knew that her chances of recovery were slim but we were determined to do as much for her as we could.

A turtle of any species in cold-shock needs very specific and intensive treatment. Initially, if it stays too cold for too long, or warms up too quickly, it will die. It cannot lift its head to breathe so it can drown. For the first few weeks it needs constant round-the-clock, hourly care and attention with specialist knowledge and experience. Depending on the species of turtle and its condition when it gets stranded, it takes many months, sometimes even years, for a turtle to recover sufficiently for successful release back into the wild.

We are an entirely native aquarium so we house only cold water British species and we had no facility for keeping a full-sized tropical turtle!

However, we succeeded in rescuing Menai, where after 8 months of being with us here at the Sea Zoo, she was transported to a rescue centre in Gran Canaria, where it was revealed she suffered from underlying health problems, and later sadly died.

At the end of November 2021 we rescued Tally, a juvenile Kemps Ridley turtle – the rarest turtle species in the world – when she washed up cold-stunned on a nearby beach here in North Wales. Through our experience and hands-on care and rehabilitation, Tally fully recovered and was ready for re-release back into the wild.

As Tally was a critically endangered Kemps Ridley sea turtle with only around 8000 breeding females remaining in the world, breeding in just one area in the Gulf of Mexico, when she recovered we wanted to release her straight back into the wild in a place where she would thrive and would most benefit the survival of her species.

It took 20 months to finally fly and release Tally in Texas after her rescue, this involved endless paperwork, complicated logistics, daily calls and emails and close collaborations across the Atlantic. In doing so we broke new ground in working directly with Kemps Ridley conservationists saving the remaining breeding population of this critically endangered species in the field in Texas, and introduced new protocols which work to best benefit Kemps Ridleys which cold-strand in the UK in the future.

As a result of our experiences with these two amazing turtles, we are now armed with all the knowledge, experience and global turtle rescue contacts needed to be UK cold-stranded turtle experts and the professional contacts we need abroad for re-releasing them after recovery.

In January 2023 we found ourselves with another addition, Tonni the Loggerhead. Tonni , when rescued was a very small but feisty Loggerhead turtle who washed up cold-stranded half a mile from us. She was succesfuly brought to the Sea Zoo where she was nursed back to full health. Unfortunately, unlike Menai and Tally, as the United Kingdom had left the European Union, we were forced to follow different legislation when transporting reptiles. This meant that we could not transport Tonni to Gran Canaria due to the EU’s ban on transporting reptiles that have salmonella. Unfortunately, the majority of wild sea turtles carry salmonella.

Luckily though, a solution was found from an unlikely source…

In September of 2024, the HMS Medway, a patrol boat that was en-route to the Caribbean picked up Tonni, and 5 other Loggerheads from Blue Reef Aquarium Newquay, Jason, Perran, Gordon, Hayle, and Devon, which were then dropped off in international waters near the Azores!

In December 2023 we rescued our 4th turtle from Rhosneigr, a local beach on Anglesey. Little Rhossi is now out of the initial recovery stage and looks set for a full recovery and release. Rhossi is another juvenile Kemps Ridley turtle so – like Tally – needs to be returned to the Gulf of Mexico to the remaining critically endangered population of its species.

However, once it came to preparing for Rhossi’s repatriation, we hit a wall again, and this time not to-do with the EU, but the U.S. government. In January 2025 Donald Trump signed an executive order that defunded many active wildlife conservation projects in the USA, this meant that the U.S. Wildlife and Fisheries Service who had previously aided us with Tally’s release, didn’t have enough funding or staff to help us for a while, however, we now have the license to release Rhossi and she is expected to depart the Sea Zoo in August 2026.