Sea Turtles

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Hannah Warner
Bree Davis
Blog 1
Marine Ecology
Sea Turtles
            Sea turtles are reptiles that live in tropical environments and are marine dwelling creatures. There are different sizes and shapes of sea turtles found all over the world. Sea Turtle size varies greatly, solely depending on the species. The small Kemp’s ridley sea turtle weighs between 80–100 pounds and the enormous leatherback sea turtle can weigh more than 1,000 pounds. The carapace of the shell can vary in shape, size, and color depending on the species of the turtle. Sea turtles don’t have teeth, but a beak to help them with eating. Even though sea turtles spend most of their lives in the water, body shape is best suited for the aquatic life. The female sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs, but the male sea turtles hardly ever return to land after they have hatched and swam into the open ocean. Nesting for sea turtles vary throughout the world, but in the US it occurs from April through October. Female sea turtles can nest up to ten times in one season, but they could skip a few years before they nest again. After about sixty days in the eggs under the sand, baby sea turtles (known as "hatchlings") emerge from their sandy nests and make their way to the massive open ocean. The juvenile sea turtles spend their first several years in the open oceans and eventually move to protected bay areas, estuaries, and other places near the shore as adult sea turtles. Baby sea turtles are still under watch as scientists don’t really know what they do or where they go right after they enter the water after being hatched. They think that the sea turtles spend the first few years of their lives just floating at the surface of the water in the sea weed beds.
Sea turtles grow slowly compared to other animals and will take 10-15 years before reaching a mature breeding stage in their lives. It is said that some species can live well over 100, but the average life time lasts around 50-80 years for wild sea turtles. Throughout the world sea turtles live in almost every ocean basin. They nest on tropical and subtropical beaches and migrate long distances to feed and breed, often crossing entire oceans. Some loggerheads nest, starting in Japan, and then eventually migrate to Baja California to forage for food before returning back home again. Leatherback sea turtles are capable of withstanding freezing water temperatures (often below 40˚F) and are sometimes found as far north as Alaska and as far south as Chile. Six of the seven species of sea turtles are majorly endangered and even threatened from the effects of humans. They face many dangers to their lives including being captured by accident and getting tangled up in fishing gear. The loss of nesting and places to feed and breed, along with coastal development, poaching, and ocean pollution.

Only a hand full of the sea turtles will make it to adulthood. All of the sea turtles known to man are on the endangered list and under protection. They have many natural predators before they have even hatched, such as raccoons and crabs that prey on the eggs and dig them up from the nest to eat them. After the sea turtles hatch, they are a great size for birds and crabs to pick up and eat before they can make it to the ocean. Once they reach the ocean, they still have a host of predators waiting to prey on them there. After they make it to adulthood though, they don’t really have any more predators. Sea turtles hold mythological stories throughout several different cultures, but this hasn’t stopped people from eating their eggs and meat. Sea turtles are a primary source of food in many coastal regions. It is, however, illegal to kill sea turtles now and harm their eggs. There is still a lot of poaching going on and illegal selling of their shells. Another threat sea turtles face is being caught by accident by commercial fishers and they just kill them and throw them back into the water. Each species relies on a different diet: greens eat sea grasses; leatherbacks feed on jellyfish and soft-bodied animals; loggerheads eat heavy-shelled animals such as crabs and clams; hawksbills rely on sponges and other invertebrates; and the Kemp’s ridley prefers crabs. 
Image result for sea turtles





Sources:
http://www.conserveturtles.org/seaturtleinformation.php?page=threats

http://www.seeturtles.org/sea-turtle-facts/
Google images 

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