Sea Turtles Essay Example

Ridley Turtle would be the first one with a shell length of twenty-two to thirty inches and a mass varying from eighty to ninety-five pounds. Then it is the Kemp’s Ridley Turtle with twenty-four to thirty inches of length and eighty to one hundred pounds. Kemp’s Ridley is followed by the Hawksbill Turtle which is thirty to thirty-five inches long and weight from ninety-five to one hundred and sixty-five pounds. The Flatback Turtle is next, measuring thirty to thirty-nine inches of length and weighing from one hundred fifty four pounds to one hundred and eight nine pounds.

In fifth place we have the green turtle the most common turtle with a shell length of thirty-two to forty-eight inches and with a mass of one hundred forty-four pounds to four hundred and four pounds. Following we have the Loggerhead turtle whose length varies from thirty-four inches high to forty-nine inches. She weighs from around one hundred and seventy-six to four hundred and forty pounds. And last but not least the longest turtle is Leatherback Turtle, having a length of fifty-two to seventy inches and weighing five hundred fifty pounds to nine hundred and seven pounds (p. 2-7).

From this point we know the approximate size of each species of turtles. There are many differences between these rare species and many interesting facts about every one of these turtles. For example, “The Kemp’s Ridley Turtle is named after Richard Kemp, one of the first researchers of this specie. ” “Both of the Ridley species display a nesting phenomenon that allows as many as 100,000 turtles emerge from the surf to nest. ” (p. 3). “Green Sea

Turtles are the most common ones because they are the first ones seen by the scuba divers and snorkelers in the Caribbean waters.

They are also known to outlive humans by not laying their first eggs until they are thirty-five years old, and growing to several hundred pounds” (p. 4). “Ridley and loggerheads are carnivorous and eat crabs and shellfish” (p. 4) they are the only turtles that follow that diet. “The Hawksbill turtles are the ones responsible for all the tortoise shell jewelry thanks to their beautiful shells and their population has been reduced in the past 250 years. ” Ranging from hatchling to full grown turtles weighting up to a thousand pounds, these amazing creatures are becoming extinct.

When anyone mentions sea turtles there are various thoughts that might come to your head. You might know very little about them or you might have been studying turtles for a while now. However, there are many interesting things that we do not know about turtles beginning with a turtle’s life inside the egg. Turtles are oviparous as they are reptiles; some reptiles keep the eggs inside their body until they are ready to be delivered to the world alive. Within the egg there is the embryo conceived by joining one male sperm with a female ovum.

In the egg there is the “sac of amniotic fluid, a yolk sac, and the allantois, a membranous sac. The amniotic fluid serves the purpose of providing a stable aquatic environment, as the yolk provides food, and while the sac allows gas exchange” (Spotila, 2004, p. 13). The temperature of the sand is what controls

when the baby turtles hatch. “If the sand is cool at around (77 degrees F/25 degrees C), incubation can take 65 to 70 days. If the temperature reaches (95 degrees F/ 35 degrees C), incubation is as quick as 45 days (p. 13). Temperature also determines the turtle’s sex.

Spotila simply explains what temperature formulates a female and what makes a male turtle. “For example, at 82 degrees green turtle hatchlings develop into males, while at 88 degrees they become females. Spotila also alludes that “temperatures between these two extremes might produce clutches with a mixture of both males and females” (p. 15). Entering the world is the next step, all the hatchlings start breaking their eggs, and the excitement and the movement trigger other turtles to hatch. After a big group of them have gotten together they start to dig their way to the beach surface.

This process usually takes “24 to 48 hours and they travel in groups of 20 to 120 individuals” (p. 16). These groups of turtles then initiate their longest journey, the crawl from the nest to the sea. In most occasions, the hatchlings carry on this process after sunset or during dark and cool hours (p. 16). “The trip to the water can be as short as one yard to as long as a football field” (Spotila, 2011). William Cromie tells us the harsh truth in his book The Living World of the Sea; “For many turtles the journey ends abruptly in the claws of a crab, the beak of a bird or the teeth of such land animals as dogs or raccoons.

The survivors climb

dunes skirt debris and work their way through tangles of brush to reach the sea. These infants seem to know exactly where the ocean is in spite of the fact that they have never seen it before” (Cromie, 1967, p. 244-47). These amazing creatures have to face all these dangers as soon as they are born. The documentary The Journey of a Sea Turtle, narrated by Nick Stringer and Miranda Richardson, comments on the fact that “at least 2 million hatchlings are born in the Florida beaches yet” “from the land and the air millions of hatchlings are dying” (documentary citation).

After the worst part is over they enter the sea and the first waves push them back into the danger. Hopefully they are strong enough to keep fighting until that big wave gives them the necessary push to remain in the sea. Once in the sea, “they are quite thirsty, having lost up to 20 percent of their body mass to evaporative water loss during their arduous climb out of the nest, the sprint across the beach, and the frantic swimming against crashing waves and strong currents (Spotila, 2011, p. 20-21).

In my opinion this documentary includes some of the most fascinating information that I have encountered in my life. It contained details about sea turtles that other informational books have never mentioned before according to my humble opinion. Part of the documentary is based on one turtle, it tells the story from when the hatchling is born until it goes back to leave her eggs to the same beach. After the adventurous sea turtle reaches the sea, she swims for two

days and two nights nonstop until she finally stops at a clear patch of Atlantic water for a comfortable place to sleep. ” (documentary citation).

The turtle’s home was destroyed by a human’s boat and she had to start traveling the ocean again. Once she is an ocean traveler, she finds many predators that easily would eat her. She starts her journey again when she runs to a problem: she has to cross through a patch of 200 jellyfish. The turtle is afraid for her life but after sharing the ocean with them for more than a million years the turtles have built immunity to their sting and they have developed a taste for their rubbery tentacles. “At last, turtles are not just prey in the big ocean, now they are predator” (documentary).

I thought I could point out those specific scenes from the movie because it gives the reader a very clear picture of what a turtle has to endure during their life. When our boats endanger their home, or when predators try to eat them, or when their family and friends are murdered they have to try to make the best of the situation and keep fighting. Continuing explaining the life cycle of a sea turtle; after the turtles have traveled all their life now is their time to experience their adolescence years. “Most juvenile turtles move out to the open ocean and reenter coastal waters now that they are bigger and stronger.”

The shells of those living along the east side of the U. S and in the Caribbean are about the size of dinner plates (Spotila, 2004, p.

25). Sea turtles reach their sexual maturity ranging from 5 years to perhaps 35 years of age. Archie Carr in the twentieth century demonstrated that female turtles return to the same beach to nest year after year (p. 28). Whenever it is mating time the male turtles race to the mating grounds to find a woman. Once the females are in sight, all males follow a female to see who gets there first to mount her and to hope that they do not get rejected (p. 28).

Mating is not a pleasant thing for neither of them, they both get bitten and they receive different wounds during this action (p. 29). Finally, the female goes to lay the eggs to where she once was fighting for her life. She then looks around the beach to find the right spot to dig her nest as she clears away any visible debris (p. 29). After she has made the hole she carefully lets her eggs go and she begins to cover the nest. Lastly, I enjoyed Spotila’s quote “This done, she heads for the surf, completing the cycle and launching another generation of sea turtles on its way”.

Up to this point, this paper has contained information about how much the species of sea turtles is declining, how there are 7 different species of sea turtles, and a turtles life cycle where they start and where they end. The next piece of information about sea turtles is going to focus on history of sea turtles. Spotila has an entire chapter dedicated to sea turtle’s history in his book Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to their Biology,

Behavior, and Conservation. He states that “sea turtles arose around one hundred and ten million years ago in the ancient oceans” (p. 59).

The oldest fossil found of a sea turtle was found in the eastern part of Brazil about 110 million years ago is called Santamanchelys gaffneyi (p. 59). Spotila lingers explaining the physical appearance of the turtle which was a mixture of fresh water specie with a sea turtle. Like today’s sea turtle this ancient turtle had a hard shell and a large head (p. 59). Something that I have realized while doing this research, the majority of researchers that publish these type of books do it to explain how these beautiful creatures have to face many difficulties through their long lives.

For example Spotila in one of his earlier books in 2004, explains how his book is his “attempt to put into words what a lifetime of studying turtles has taught him, it is a complex story about a complex group of animals that have suffered stunning declines in the twentieth century. ” He couldn’t stand there with crossed arms without doing anything about the disasters that he saw threatening sea turtles (p. 3). Archie Carr is known as the Father of Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation; he provided a model for all other scientists to follow, to care for animals and help them survive.

James Spotila acknowledged in his book that “Almost single-handedly he (Archie) brought sea turtles from the edge of extinction to the edge of hope. ” “Sea Turtles survive today in large part because of Archie Carr. He was one with his organism and also

one with people” (Spotila, 2004, p. 9). As we can see Archie was a man who did everything to help turtles, but one person is not enough. Sea turtles need much more than one person to impede them from wiping out of the planet. We know that extinction is difficult to prevent but many people do not realize how many dangers sea turtles face in their lives.

“All 7 species of sea turtles are listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red list of Threatened Animals” (Triessnig, Roetzer, and Stachowitsch, 2012). Frazer’s diary (1986) (as cited in Triessnig et al. , 2012) states that only “few sea turtles survive from egg to adulthood, with various models yielding an often-cited 1:1000 survival rates. ” One out of one thousand sea turtles are succeeding at the simple fact of surviving to start their lives. These are high numbers that we do not consider when we often hear that marine turtles are becoming extinct.

Triessnig et al. (2012) research show that when studying sea turtle’s mortality “values range from 2. 5% of the hatchling dying in the first 15 minutes of leaving shore for loggerhead hatchlings (Glenn, 1998) to 6. 9% in the first 20 minutes for Hawskbill hatchlings (Harewoodd and Horrock, 2008) to 46. 5% for green turtle hatchlings followed for one hour or near reefs with predaceous fishes (Pilcher et al. , 2000)” (Triessnig et al. , 2012, p. 1). These marine creatures face many trying difficulties that get in the way of surviving in both the marine and the terrestrial ecosystems.

Firstly, in land hatchlings face natural predators that are

anxious to eat them such as dogs, pigs, rats, birds, crocodiles, ghost crabs, and lizards (p. 2). Another factor that is mentioned by Witherungton and Bjorndal (1991) is that these living things can also face anthropogenic threats caused by light pollution that can disorient the hatchlings into danger. Davenport (1997) said that the period of time spent crossing from their nest to the sea is very short compared to the time spent in the nest and the time in the actual sea, but losses here are thought to be substantial (Triessnig et al. , 2012).

Once their journey started and they are passed digging up 2 feet of sand, passed the predators that were waiting for them at the beach shore, now they are on their way to go in the water (Documentary). Once in the sea the biggest dangers in the sea are predators: varying from birds to sharks (Triessnig et al. , 2012, p. 1). “Another very well-known thereat to adult and juvenile turtles is entanglement, toxins, and ingestion of plastics caused by Humans” (Carr, 1987). Humans are endangering the life of these beautiful animals that have to fight to stay alive since the moment they are born.

“Research shows that one of the most dangerous threats to sea turtles is marine debris. Plastic is the most common trash that is found worldwide and of course beaches that are not cleaned have the greatest densities of plastic pollution (Triessnig et al. , 2012, p. 4). According to Carr (1987) “sea turtles are most prone to eating these plastics that are exposed in near shore habitats in which they feed. ” A study

that took place at Mole beach in Brazil conducted by Projecto Tamar rescued a green turtle on July 18, 2010.

“The male turtle was 39 cm and weighed 6 kilograms, the turtle received physical examination in order to see how healthy it was. The turtle seemed to be weak and in very bad conditions including dehydration and prostration” (Stahelin, Hennemann, Cegoni, Wanderline, Lima, and Goldberg, 2010, p. 2). The turtle’s death occurred shortly after initial care and not much could be done at that point. After thoroughly examination there was a great amount of debris found in his digestive system that apparently was blocking the air passage. The plastic content was extracted from the body and was analyzed and weighed” (Stahelin et al., 2010, p. 3-5).

The majority of his body was covered with debris. “In the esophagus, 18 items were found (2. 3g), in the stomach there were 308 (34. 14g), and in the large intestine there were 3,267 items (233. 16g)” (p. 5-6). They also came to the conclusion that there it is very likely that the obstruction that prevented the turtle from breathing caused by marine debris led to this turtles death (p. 6). Lastly, “Although only one case report is presented in this study, it shows how devastating marine debris can be to marine animals” (p. 7). Apart from Marine Debris, there are many other reasons why sea turtles are in trouble.

“People kill sea turtles to make jewelry and drums from their shells, to eat their meat and eggs, and people building on top of their nests” (Spotila, 2011, p. 2). “The Great BP Oil Spill filled

the Gulf of Mexico of oils and chemicals. Many fish, birds, and sea turtles in the spill area died. There was a very thick layer of oil and there was very little or zero intent to save the animals. Instead of helping nature, the oil contractors burned off large areas of oil in the sea surface and most of the animals were oiled, starved, and broiled alive” (p. 3).

Another very tricky thing that puts these living things in danger is poachers. Poachers are people who take eggs in order to collect them or to sell them. Some of these people do not realize the damage that they are causing but others just do not care about the consequences of their actions. “In heavily populated areas the poachers take all the eggs on the beach, this could cause complete extinction” (p. 5). There is one article that contains very clear information about a study that took place in the Western Caribbean showing sea turtle extinction.

One of the most serious threats to green turtle populations in the Caribbean are “artisanal turtle fisheries” (Campbell, Lagueux, 2005). It provides information showing “a severe decline in nesting at Tortuguero in the 1970’s, only a few years after three turtle processing plants began operations on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. The demand for turtles harvested was from 5,000 to 10,000 turtles collected annually. ” Nicaragua went back into business in the “1990’s harvesting at least 11,000 turtles annually” (Campbell, Lagueux, 2011).

It is a very sad reality that we are the ones harming the sea turtles and whenever we least expect it they are going to disappear.

Sea turtles are unique creatures that have been swimming the oceans for the past hundred million years. Having escaped the mass extinction that took care of all dinosaurs, now turtles have to face new dangers that humans and animals have prepared for them. One of the most effective conservation awareness campaigns, The Great Turtle Race, reached more than one hundred million people around the world (Spotila, 2011, p. 13).

This event was started by a graduate student George Shillinger who was studying at Stanford University. He was working on his dissertation research when he decided to translate scientific information into a web in order to save sea turtles (p. 13). I thought this was amusing to think that just one person created this web and it promoted other people with the opportunity to help as well. I honestly think that there is a way to help sea turtles by making a few minor alterations in our lives.

Sea turtles today face many troubles that will haunt them for their lives but there is one thing they will never have to worry about: getting lost. In the documentary Miranda Richardson chooses the perfect words to describe why turtles are never lost. “A sea turtle is never lost. ” “Using the magnetic lines of the earth that run from the North to the South like invisible wires they can determine their location in any part of the sea. The turtles have within them, not only a compass, but a map of the ocean world” (Documentary citation).