Turtles

b ehaviour They are self sentard and nice. Turtles for the most part are not aggressive to people. Most turtles are like people or any other pet you have they have there own personalities and temperamets some of ours are aggressive. if you pull them out of the water, yet docile in the water and do not attempt to bite some of the others are quite different they will try to run if you .remove them from the tank. Yet if you place your hand inside the water...Well.

= = = Habitat & Diet =

Sea turtles live in almost every ocean basin throughout the world, nesting in tropical and subtropical waters. They can travel long distances to feed, and they often swim entire oceans to do so. Some loggerheads nest in Japan and migrate to Baja California Sur, Mexico to forage before returning home again (read about Adelita, the first turtle tracked across the Pacific). Leatherbacks are capable of withstanding the coldest water temperatures (often below 40˚F) and are found as far south as Chile and as far north as Alaska.

They spend their entire lives at sea, except when adult females come ashore to lay eggs several times per season every 2 to 5 years. After about sixty days, baby sea turtles (known as "hatchlings") emerge from their sandy nests and make their way to the ocean —attracted to the distant horizon. The juvenile turtles spend their first few years in the open oceans, eventually moving to protected bays, estuaries, and other nearshore waters.

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.



=** Facts about Sea Turtles. **=

From leatherbacks to loggerheads, six of the seven species of sea turtles that swim the world’s oceans are threatened or endangered largely at the hand of humans. Sadly, they face many dangers as they travel the seas — including accidental capture and entanglement in fishing gear (also known as bycatch), the loss of nesting and feeding sites to coastal development, intentional hunting (poaching), and pollution.

These creatures are well-adapted to their ocean environment though they require air to survive. Their size varies greatly, depending upon species — from the small Kemp’s ridley, which weighs between 80–100 pounds, to the enormous leatherback, which can weighs more than 1,000 pounds.

= ﻿ ﻿littleones = when the eggerlings hach thay haf to find there own way home.

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= Sea Turtle Life Cycle = The life cycle of a sea turtle starts when a female lays its eggs on a nesting beach, usually in the tropics. From six weeks to two months later (depending on the species), a tiny hatchling makes its way to the surface of the sand and heads to the water, dodging every predator imaginable. From the time they take their first swim until they return to coastal waters to forage as juveniles may be as long as a decade. This period of time is often referred to as the "lost years" since following sea turtles movements during this phase is difficult and their whereabouts are often unknown. Following the "lost years", when they have grown to approximately the size of a dinner plate, their pelagic (open ocean) phase comes to an end and they return to coastal waters where they forage and continue to mature. During this time, these reptiles are highly mobile, foraging over large areas of ocean. As sub-adults and adults, sea turtles are more easily studied using a variety of techniques which enable scientists to have a better picture of their habitat, behavior, and distribution. The time to sexual maturity (when they are able to reproduce) varies among species but ranges between approximately 10-50 years. Once they reach sexual maturity they will migrate to nesting areas to breed. Only females will come ashore to lay eggs, generally in the area where they were born. Most species will nest multiple times during a nesting season at intervals of 2-4 years over the course of their lifetime.

It is not known exactly how long sea turtles live in the wild, but scientists think their life span may be as long as a century. Unfortunately though, turtles face a multitude of threats related to human activities. For more information about the challenges they face, see our pages about threats.

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