Finding Tally: Texas turtle’s journey home

Texas Gulf Coast is becoming a safe haven for flippered friends A recent bit of news from Galveston reads like a children’s book: Tally the Turtle wandered too far from home and got lost. Tally was cold, alone and afraid. But then some nice marine biologists found her and let her fly in an airplane to be reunited with other turtles in Texas.

But this isn’t a children’s book. Tally is a real-life sea turtle–a Kemp’s ridley, to be exact. Her breed is the smallest species of sea turtle (adults only grow to about two feet long) and one of the rarest.

They are found primarily in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and along the East Coast, but they can be swept up in strong Gulf Stream currents and taken far from home.