Green Sea Turtle

Before anything happens, I challenge you to hold your breath from the second that you read this until I tell you to let go your breath and resume your breathing, I will tell you why by the end of this post.

There's a very cute Pixar animation from Disney called Finding Nemo playing in theaters some years ago saying how a father Clown Fish, Marlin, was looking for his son, Nemo, and on his journey Marlin met a Sea Turtle named Crush. Now Crush is a cool suave dude who told Marlin that sea turtles can live up to 100 years! But actually they live up to the age of 80.

So, today's topic is going to be the turtle, not the clown fish. (Sorry, Marlin, it's not your day, another time.)

Now Crush is a Green Sea Turtle, or the Chelonia Mydas, are one of the Earth's most ancient creatures. The seven species that can be found today have been around for 120 million years, that's longer than the dinosaurs. The sea turtle's shell, or "carapace" is streamlined for swimming through the water. Unlike other turtles, sea turtles cannot retract their legs and head into their shells. Their color varies between yellow, greenish and black depending on the species. One thing that I didn't know before I went to the aquarium is that the turtle's backbone is actually attached to the shell instead of inside the body like us humans! How cool is that?!

The sizes of sea turtles can be quite wide, since there are a few different of them, but to give you readers some idea, here are some fast fun facts: Kemp's Ridley is the smallest sea turtle at 30 inches long (.762m). The largest sea turtle is the leatherback - an adult can reach over six and a half feet long (over 1.8m). Adult female and male sea turtles are the same size.

Weight: Kemp's Ridley weighs between 80-100lbs (36-45 kg). Leatherback can weigh over 2,000 pounds (over 907 kg)

Now their diet can also vary, again with the different turtles and all, but their most common food sources include jellyfish, seaweed, crabs, shrimp, sponges, snails, algae and mollusks.

Sea turtles spend most of their lives in the water, where not much information can be gathered on their behavior. Most of what is known about sea turtle behavior is obtained by observing hatchlings and females that leave the water to lay eggs. Sea turtles, like salmon, will return to the same nesting grounds at which they were born. When females come to the shore they dig out a nest in the ground with their back flippers, bury their clutch of eggs and return to the ocean. After hatching, the young may take as long as a week to dig themselves out of the nest. They emerge at night, move toward the ocean and remain there, solitary, until it is time to mate.

Now the baby turtles' gender (sex) is decided by the temperature from the environment, so that means below 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30ºC) is predominately male; above 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30ºC) is predominately female. Their mating season is between March-October depending on the species.
Gestation: 6-10 weeks.
Clutch size: Between 70-190 eggs depending on the species.
When the young hatch out of their eggs, they make their way to the ocean. Very few of them survive to adulthood due to predators, pollution, global warming, oil spills and so on.


Ok, before your face turn blue due to lack of oxygen, you can breath now. But the Sea turtle is still holding its breath at this moment after you have already finished reading this post, since they can stay under water for as long as five hours even though the length of a feeding dive is usually five minutes or less. Their heart rate slows to conserve oxygen: nine minutes may elapse between heartbeats.