Did You Know…?
Sea Turtles help eating jellyfish, and it has made us safe whenever we go to the sea. They can devour them like spaghetti without getting poisoned. Sea Turtles are also essential to the ecosystem, especially near a shore, so that we have beautiful coral reefs and seas for us when we go diving.
Today, we will get to know more about them.
1. Sea Turtles don't have teeth, but their jaws and lips are made of Keratin, the same material that our fingernails are made out of, connecting from the skull.
2. The shell is actually their bones.
They are fused from over 50 pieces of bones, patching together into one whole hard shell fantastically naturally.
It is magnificent how this seems like they instead put their bones outside, and flesh inside.
3. Sea Turtles must fight for their survival since birth, struggling to run to the sea after they hatch from eggs, fleeing from predators around as birds, reptiles, and even crabs have waited for their feast. Because they are as tiny as our thumb, they will continue finding the way of life through dangers in the sea.
There are only about 1 in a thousand sea turtles living till their adulthood.
4. Their young ages are still so mysterious to us that it is called “The Lost Years”, that can be as long as 20 years. The difficulty is due to that it is very hard to follow baby sea turtles. Even though we can tag them, a tag cannot function that long, and could only show the locations.
5. Sea Turtles can swim an unbelievably long distance. The farthest survey shows that one sea turtle swam from Indonesia to the coast of California. That is nearly 13,000 miles (over 20,000 kilometres).
6. Their adult size is largely varied.
They can be as small as 70 cm. long and weighed as light as 40 kg. for the Kemp Ridley's, to the largest species of the Leatherback that is 2-metre long, and half a tonne heavy.
7. In the mating season, sea turtles can find their way precisely to the beach they have born. Thanks to their ability to navigate by magnetic field as a compass from their sensitive nervous system.
8. While a Leatherback is laying eggs, they make the distinct voice. Someone says that it sounds like when we belch. Scientists still have no idea why they make that kind of sound.
9. Sea turtles' favourite food is in red, orange, and yellow colours, or translucent and reflective. This behaviour makes them accidentally eat plastic, mistaken it for food.
10. There are only 7 species of Sea Turtle left, Flatback, Green, Hawksbill, Olive Ridley, Leatherback, Loggerhead, and Kemp's Ridley.
However, all of them are on the Red list of endangered species.
Even though Sea Turtles can live for over a hundred years, but their number keeps terrifyingly decreasing.
Since their favourite food is jellyfish, they mistakenly eat plastic. Plastic has found in over half of the sea turtles' stomach, while a lot of them die because of it.
Not only plastic bags, but also plastic straws, pieces of bottle, equipments, including toys.
Apart from that, most beaches are polluted or deformed to residence and tourist places. Sea turtles do not have a suitable area for laying eggs as many beaches have never seen any sea turtles returned for years. And when they do come back, their babies are at risk of being illegally hunted for eggs.
16th of June every year is the World Sea Turtle Day.
We think, now that you get to know more of the Sea Turtles, you will love them more, being more thoughtful.
Like friends that the longer you know them, the more you love them, being closer to them.
Sea Turtles are our fellow friends in this world as well.
Reducing plastic use, keeping beaches clean, don't throw rubbish to rivers and seas…
are all the easy ways to fix that we can start just today.
One Small Change
-can make-
One Big Difference
