On the shores of Padre Island, just off the coast of Texas, a German shepherd waddles through the water.

But he’s not there to play. Saul vigilantly inspects his surroundings to fulfill a very important mission.

Earlier this year, the state of Texas was ravaged by a rare cold front from the Arctic.

It caused temperatures to plummet in an otherwise dry state. The unexpected cold snap broke the state’s utilities like water, heating, and electricity. People were forced to hunker in and brave through the freezing temperatures.

But humans were not the only ones who were left vulnerable to the elements.

On Padre Island, thousands of turtles were affected by the sudden drop in temperatures.

Turtles are cold-blooded animals. It means that they rely on ambient temperatures to regulate their body heat. So when the weather became Arctic-like, the sea-turtles’ heart rates slowed down to the point of paralysis. This is called “cold-stunning.” The turtles are alive but they could just helplessly float or settle down.

“They know they should be flapping their fins and raising their heads to breathe. All of those instincts are happening, but their body isn’t fulfilling its instincts,” says Wendy Knight, executive director of Sea Turtle, Inc. to The National Geographic.

If left to fend for themselves, the island’s turtle population would be decimated by the freezing temperatures.

To save the turtles, conservation societies and volunteers pulled all the help they could get, from sailors, scientists, veterinarians, and the local population.

Joining them in this important mission is Saul, a German shepherd dog trained to look for turtles.

He helps his team, the K9s 4 Conservation, search for stranded turtles. With his sharp eyes and keen sense of smell, Saul provides invaluable assistance by reacting to clues that humans would’ve missed.

In this video, Saul runs ahead of Christian Fritz, his handler.

But as he passed spot long the concrete breakwater, he suddenly turned and was riled up. Fritz said that this is the behavior one would watch out for because it means that the dog probably caught something of interest.

Saul found not just one, but two turtles hiding under the soaked concrete blocks. Fritz and his team quickly extracted the turtles and tucked them safely on their flatbeds.

These juvenile turtles are part of the forty turtles he rescued in just three days.

These are forty sea turtles that humans would’ve missed. But thanks to Saul and the other dogs that became part of the rescue effort, these turtles would live on to swim for many more years to come.

The cold snap took a toll on the green turtle population but the conservationists are optimistic about the thousands of turtles they rescued.

“It definitely is a blow. But I think we should look at it not in how many turtles died, but how many turtles were rescued. Communities came together. Thousands and thousands were rescued and survived,” Barbara Schroeder from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said to the NPR.

And communities came together, indeed. From volunteers, government and environmental organizations, the Houston Zoo, and the dogs who left no turtle behind.

See Saul helping the sea turtles in the video below!

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Source: YouTube – World Animal Awareness Society, Facebook – K9s 4 Conservation, National Geographic, NPR, ABC