Sea turtles are reptiles that have adapted to marine life except for the females’ necessity to leave the sea and nest on sandy beaches.
A female may nests 3 or 4 times in one year and then take a period of 2 to 4 years before she will nests again.
Each nest contains about 100 soft-shelled eggs, “round and white like a ping-pong ball”. In 50 to 70 days the nest hatches and the babies head to the sea.
In the sea the baby turtles follow water currents and eat on whatever they find floating with them. After a number of years, and bigger than about 30cm, the turtles change habitat to be found in more shallow waters where they eat from the sea bed.
At a shell size of at least 65cm (what age this is no one is sure but estimates range up to 20 years or more) the female turtles start to become sexually mature and head back to their natal region to nest, thus producing the next generation of sea turtle.
There are six genus’ of sea turtles in existence today, from these 3 species are more or less commonly found in the eastern Mediterranean. The leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) is a migrant from the Atlantic and does not nest. The green turtle (Chelonia mydas) nests mainly in Turkey and Cyprus and the loggerhead (Caretta caretta) nests mainly in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus but is more numerous and widespread than the green turtle.
Sea turtles are protected by internation and national laws as they are endangered species. The Mediterranean green turtle is considered a critically endangered population of this species.
The main threats to turtles, that have survived remarkably unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, are human in origin. Deliberate and incidental capture in fishing tools kills and injures turtles, pollution in the sea causes death as the turtles ingest unsuitable material or get tangled in garbage and nesting beaches are becoming destroyed by development and sand extraction or the baby turtles are lured to their deaths by lights shining at the back of the beaches.
Natural threats to turtles include predation of juveniles, hatchlings and nests and nest destruction from storm wave coverage.
You now know the basics of sea turtles click on a subject to the left of your screen to learn more…