We headed back to South Padre Island to visit the sea turtle rescue center. This was right next to the bird and nature center that we visited on Monday. There are five species of sea turtles that can be found around South Padre Island and they are all endangered. Until to 1960s, sea turtles were harvested for a variety of reasons (remember turtle soup?). But that has pretty much been stopped. Now the very slow process of increasing the population is going on.
A lot of injuries still occur from props, fishing line and the turtles eating plastic trash. The hospital here gets new arrivals on almost a daily basis. What is depicted in the mural is a prosthetic device being developed allowing the turtle to swim after the loss of limbs. The next picture is the device attached to a large turtle. Most, but not all, of the turtles get released back into the wild but the loss of limbs make them easy targets as their only defense is speed.
They had a good talk as part of their education program and this facility has been going for a number of years.
I’m relaxing here on one of their benches looking towards the water. Sunny, 64°F, a light breeze. Doesn’t get much better than this (weather-wise). The forecast is for more wind through the weekend. Not looking forward to that.
We then headed a bit down the road to the Laguna Madre Nature Trail. It was a boardwalk the starts at the convention center. It simply runs to two bird blinds (or that’s what they were labeled). Basically a wooden structure with seats to look for birds. Not a blind that hides the viewers like I would have expected. The next photo is an iPhone snapshot with way too much digital zoom from one of the blinds.
The walkway itself sort of parallels the walkways from the bird center but it looks much older and could use some maintenance. All of the planks you walk on are an older generation of recycled plastic kind of like Trex. It actually looks like the same material I used on our back deck almost 20 years ago. I’m kind of happy to see that it holds up this well in a much harsher environment.
Time to head back and hold down one of the chaise lounges. After all, you don’t really want them to float away…. ;-)
Weatherwise it looks like the perfect place to stay. All we got lately is (storm) wind and rain. January looked like spring, February like April, let's see what March will bring.
ReplyDeleteSouth Texas is turning out to be a really nice location. I was not sure what to expect as I had never visited the area before. I would definitely come back here again...
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