Will Bellamy with his son Jerome rescued sea turtles in Texas. (Will Bellamy)

As bitterly cold weather left millions without power in Texas, the extreme cold has also been a disaster for wildlife, including sea turtles. Thousands of green sea turtles in the water of Laguna Madre off Corpus Christi have become stunned by the cold. The cold-blooded reptiles become immobile and unable to power their fins to warmer, deeper waters, putting them at risk of dying of predation or exposure, according to the National Park Service.

“It was like an apocalypse of turtles littered on the beach,” Will Bellamy, who came across the turtles, told The Washington Post in a phone interview Thursday.

The Washington Post reports that Bellamy, an Army and Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and Haiti, saw some turtles Tuesday with his son Jerome. But he needed help. He alerted Capt. Christopher Jason, the commander of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in southeastern Texas, and his wife, Cheryl Jason. The commander grabbed his kayak, paddled into the cold waves and retrieved a lapful of cold-shocked turtles.

But the next day, on Bellamy’s turtle patrol, the situation became far more urgent, he said, and one that would require a lot more hands.

More than 1,100 turtles have since been plucked from Laguna Madre by a ragtag group of about 50 Navy pilots and flight students, military spouses, family members and military retirees, said Biji Pandisseril, the Navy installation’s environmental manager. More turtles are still coming in, he said, and some have died.

Word spread in the military community, but the movement began with Bellamy flagging down motorists to help, he said. From there, the efforts mushroomed to a full-blown operation. Bellamy said one active-duty Navy pilot trainee on scene called in other trainees with pickup trucks to haul the stunned turtles to heated storage facilities at the air station.

The larger community at the airbase has not been immune to the struggles millions of other Texans still face in the storm. Many of them had no heat or water in the past few days, Jason said.

“Most of these people didn’t have good conditions in their own homes,” he said. “But they came out to help.”