A rescued green sea turtle will be released back into the Gulf of Mexico, carrying the ashes of a self-taught American oceanographer who founded the rehabilitation centre that nursed it back to health.
Amos, 80, died of complications from prostate cancer on September 4, days after Hurricane Harvey roared ashore. It caused extensive damage to the Animal Rehabilitation Keep for ailing sea turtles and aquatic birds that Amos opened nearly four decades ago.
But the turtles there weathered the storm well as their counterparts in the wild also appear to have done, scientists say.
Amos was born in London and went to Bermuda at 17, trying unsuccessfully to engineer a flat-screen television. Having never graduated from college, he moved to Port Aransas in 1976 and became an oceanographer for the University of Texas Marine Science Institute.
Three years later, the Ixtoc I exploratory well exploded in the Gulf about 80 km from Mexico’s coast, and Amos saw the devastating effects of the resulting oil spill on sea life.
He later founded the Animal Rehabilitation Keep, which still helps hundreds of turtles and birds annually tackling everything from pelicans that swallow plastic to turtles stricken with a tumour-causing virus.
Marine voyager
Known for a long, white beard that helped him play Santa Claus at Christmas, Amos retired in 2003 but continued working, collecting and analysing debris on Texas beaches and painstakingly entering findings in databases.
He also sailed on marine voyages throughout the world.
“I considered him a genius,” said Jace Tunnell, director of Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve. “He was a great oceanographer but he was so humble.”
