Omiros: The Blind Sea Turtle Who Opened So Many Eyes

Omiros the loggerhead sea turtle, who was rescued off the coast of Greece having become entangled in discarded fishing gear, spent the last 17 years of his life as part of the Blue Reef Aquarium family. A big part.

Left completely blind after the incident, Omiros found ways to navigate by touch in his Ocean tank home, and as the years ebbed by, he opened more than a few eyes to the majesty and the plight of sea turtles and the wider issues facing marine life every day.

Let’s Talk Legacy

We can measure legacy in myriad ways.

It can be something intimate, carried on the smile of a memory like a delicate flower. It can be huge, reaching arms across the world to touch millions. It can resonate on the notes of a piano, be brushed in strokes across a canvas, or ride on winds of change across a planet.

And sometimes, it can be a five-foot sea turtle in Newquay, Cornwall.

Blue Reef Aquarium, when you think about it, seemed a fairly good place for such a legacy to happen. Blessed with exterior windows that took in the wild Atlantic, and interior ones that offered insight into the ocean’s many inhabitants.

A rugged corner of the land, whose roots burrow deep into Cornish soil, but also cast wide to the Atlantic sea. We live at its edges, make a living from it, we surf in it, fish in it, photograph it, and occasionally, we simply gaze out across it.

The sea is a part of everything in this neck of the woods.

And so too was Omiros. At least, that’s how big his presence felt. As though everything that happened under the roof of this aquarium on the edge of the sea, was fueled by a sea turtle delivered to us by fate and bad luck.

For 17 years, he found a home in his ocean tank. Completely blind, quietly going about his business while thousands upon thousands of people stood and watched.

He could not see them.

But they could to see him.

And, rather wonderfully, that seemed to be enough.