12/05/2025
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Jean Beasley, who turned her young daughter’s dying wish into a mission to save sea turtles, has died, aged 90.
/ By Rhett Ayers Butler /
On the beaches of Topsail Island in North Carolina, sea turtles still crawl ashore in the dark to lay their eggs. For many years, a woman with a clipboard and a steady presence walked those sands before dawn, counting tracks and marking nests. Her reason for being there began with loss.
In 1991 her daughter, Karen, died of leukemia at the age of 29. Before she passed away, she gave her mother one clear request: “Do something good for sea turtles.” The pair had spent countless nights walking those same beaches together, watching over hatchlings and guiding them to the water. After Karen’s death, Jean Beasley returned to the work not to fill her time, but to honor a promise.
She preferred not to speak of sacrifice. “I loved every minute of what I did,” she said decades later. She was a former teacher, and saw the same spark in a child learning about turtles as in a hatchling entering the surf. Saving one animal mattered. But inspiring someone to care about the ocean might someday save thousands.
In the mid-1990s, she and other volunteers found themselves with an injured sea turtle and nowhere to take it. So she created a place. From a cramped 900-square-foot building by Banks Channel, she launched the first sea turtle rehabilitation center in North Carolina. Visitors arrived expecting beautiful, unblemished animals. They instead found turtles cut by propellers, tangled in fishing line, or sickened by debris. Some offered a few dollars to help. When that wasn’t enough, she caught fish herself.
Her message to volunteers was simple: “If you share your dreams with somebody, you just never know who will step up and share them with you.”
Share she did. Over time, that small building gave way to
The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center, a fully equipped 13,000-square-foot hospital in Surf City, with a classroom, public tours, and room for veterinary work. Children and university students came to learn, many leaving with a new sense of responsibility toward the ocean.
Her results were tangible. Since 1995, more than 3,000 nests have been safeguarded through her programs, and over 245,000 hatchlings have made their sprint to the waves. More than 1,600 sick or injured sea turtles have passed through her care, many returning to the sea before cheering crowds.
She reminded people that the harm these ancient animals endure is not their fault. Humanity has made the world more dangerous for them. The least we can do is help them survive us.
On her beaches today, countless turtles swim because she kept a daughter’s wish alive. Jean Beasley believed that if people were given the chance to care, they would. And many thousands of times, she was proved right.
💐 The full piece: https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/jean-beasley-who-turned-her-young-daughters-dying-wish-into-a-mission-to-save-sea-turtles-has-died/
