Photo gallery: Tybee crowd cheers sea turtle as he heads for home

A crowd of 200 people gathered on Tybee Island’s North Beach on Saturday to watch Ossie the sea turtle go home.

Staff from the Tybee Island Marine Science Center carried the 3-year-old loggerhead sea turtle toward the water and set it on the wet sand.

---

Browse Coastal Lens
Stories on projects, policy, legislation

See more

---

For a moment, Ossie sat still. Then the turtle began to crawl toward the water’s edge.

As the crowd watched in silence, Ossie moved across the sand, reached the Atlantic’s edge, and disappeared into the waves.

“It was really awesome to see Ossie do the natural thing of crawling all the way,” said Sarah Alley, a curator at the Tybee Island Marine Science Center.

Ossie arrived at the science center in 2023 after being found on Ossabaw Island as a straggler, a hatchling left behind in the nest after the other turtles had emerged.

Over the next three years, the loggerhead grew to about 36 pounds while serving as one of the center’s Marine Debris Ambassadors. Nearly 55,000 visitors each year watched Ossie grow and learned about sea turtles and the threats posed by marine debris and plastics to wildlife along Georgia’s coast.

Alley helped care for Ossie from the moment the turtle arrived as a hatchling.

For staff members and visitors who had watched the turtle grow, Saturday’s release was emotional.

“It’s emotional. It’s like bittersweet,” Alley said. “We’re excited for them to get out in the wild, but we’re also kind of nervous.”

“We wish we could keep them forever, but they’re meant to do their wild animal thing.”

The celebration stretched beyond the science center staff.

People arrived with signs, dressed for the occasion, and cheered as Ossie crawled toward the water. Some traveled hundreds of miles to see the release, according to TIMSC volunteer Lindsey McGuire, who dressed as Ossie for the event and helped lead the crowd in turtle crawls, dances, and cheers.

Saturday’s release was not the end of Ossie’s story.

Before entering the Atlantic, the center fitted Ossie with a satellite transmitter that will allow the center and the public to track its movements as it explores the Atlantic Coast.

Save Sea Life, a nonprofit founded by eleven-year-old Liddy Clever, sponsored the $1,800 transmitter. Clever also sponsored the satellite tracker placed on Westie, another Marine Debris Ambassador released by the science center in 2025.

Clever said tracking turtles like Ossie can help people better understand the ocean and the animals that depend on it.

“If we can learn more about the ocean, then we can find out how to protect it better,” she said.

The science center plans to share updates on Ossie’s movements every Wednesday, through its “Out and About with Ossie” series once the satellite transmitter begins sending data.

Loggerheads spend much of their early lives at sea before returning to coastal waters as they grow. Adults can weigh hundreds of pounds and travel thousands of miles.

For three years, the turtle helped educate visitors about marine debris and the threats to wildlife along Georgia’s coast.

On Saturday, Ossie’s role as an ambassador came to an end with a brief crawl across the sand.

After three years teaching people about the ocean, Ossie was finally in it.