CCC researchers tag the turtle with the name you select for it at their research station in Costa Rica. With a “Name your own Turtle Adoption,” you are the only person to adopt that turtle. You are also notified when, or if, researchers spot your turtle again. CCC members can also follow a sea turtle on its migrations on the web. Some named turtles have small satellite transmitters attached to the backs of their shells. By logging onto the site, you can track turtles as they move from foraging grounds to nesting sites.

The watamu Turtle watch ( WTW), in Kenya, Africa, also allows you to adopt green sea turtles through a small donation. This conservation group offers adoptions for turtles just released from local fishing nets. You can even adopt an entire sea turtle nest. The WTW was formed in 1997 to continue the efforts begun in the 1970’s by a local naturalist to conserve marine turtles in the Watamu Marine Park and along the northern shores of a creek.

Turtle Tales

Sea turtles can be found off the coast of many countries around the world. The turtle appears in the tales and beliefs of many different cultures. One folktale from Papua, New Guinea explains how that island was created by a sea turtle. The turtle wanted somewhere to rest when she grew tired of swimming. She brought rocks and sand to build a hill in the ocean. When she was getting the rocks, she found a man living alone in a cave beneath the sea. He wanted a wife and a family. The turtle took him to her island. Then she swam across the sea to another island and found a woman who wanted a husband. The turtle brought her to the island to live with the man. The couple raised a family, and they eventually populated the whole island.

There is a Hawaiian legend about a young turtle named Kauila whose parents were two supernatural turtles. Kauila could become a human girl and then turn back into a turtle. She would change into a girl to play with children and then return to a turtle to an underwater spring to sleep. When she returned to her spring, she would become a turtle again. Kauila protected the village children from drowning and her spring gave them fresh water.

A fable from Papua, New Guinea explains how sea turtles got their shells and why they live in the sea. A turtle was found eating chiefs bananas. The villagers decided to eat the turtle and tied him upside down in a large wooded dish. The turtle escaped into the sea, with the dish still tied to his back. Since then, turtles have had shells on their backs, lived in the sea, and never eaten bananas.
A fable from Fiji explains a custom of women calling turtles from the sea. The legend describes two women kidnapped by the people of another village. As the women were being taken away in canoes, they changed into sea turtles, and their kidnappers became frightened and threw them overboard. The sea turtles are said to be the relatives of those two captive women. The woman of their village still chant a song above the water, and the sea turtles rise to hear the song.

As you may have already guessed, this turtle, like the others is so named for a reason. It is named for the olive color of its unique heart shaped shell. These turtles average about 100 pounds and have a carapace length of just 27 inches. The carapace is a dark olive green and the underside is yellow. The biggest and more obvious difference between this turtle and the Kemps Ridley is the number of coastal scutes on the upper shell.

The Olive turtle is an omnivore; it eats crustaceans’, mollusks, algae, and tunicates. It will typically lay around 110 eggs, which take about 50 to 60 days to incubate. Olive ridleys also nest in massive aggregations. These are known as arribadas. The Kemps Ridley turtle also share this nesting habit. Olive Ridleys are very widely distributed, and they are not in nearly as bad a condition as the Kemps Ridley.

The loggerhead turtle is the second largest of the sea turtle species. Its shell usually has a length of 34 to 49 inches ( 86 to 124 centimeters). The loggerhead has a reddish brown shell and it is distinctive in that it has five or more costal plates on each side of the neurals. The underside (plastron) is yellow. Two pairs of large scales are located on top of the head between the eyes and the nostrils. Each of the loggerheads forelimbs has two claws. The male has a much longer tail which enables him to grasp the female during mating.

Loggerhead turtles mature between the ages of 20 and 30 years. The adults rarely weigh more than 350 pounds, although there are reports of giants weighing up to 500 pounds. Loggerhead turtles are believed to be capable of reproducing for as long as 30 years. Loggerhead nesting begins in the spring, extending from late April to September. An average clutch consists of about 100 eggs. The eggs will incubate for about 60 days before producing two inch long hatchlings that weigh only 3/5 of an ounce.

The loggerhead turtle is also distinct for a particularly unpleasant matter. Unlike other sea turtles, which are known to be gentle, loggerheads have been known to turn nasty when disturbed. A story in 1905 told of two men in a rowboat who tried to catch a 610 pound loggerhead. The angry turtle fought capture by using its flippers to nearly turn the boat on its side. It had also chewed the oars and tore at one mans arm. The turtle then swam away.

The flatback turtle only nests on beaches in Australia and is considered to be the most mysterious of all sea turtles. Little is known about what this species eats or the path of its migration from nesting to foraging grounds. There are about thirty thousand mature females alive today, and the Australian government is doing a good job of protecting its nesting beaches. However, the fact that this turtle lives in only one part of the ocean, rather than being spread around the globe, could make it more vulnerable to extinction.

The Flatback turtle fees mostly on sea cucumbers and crustaceans. It is also typically found in grassy shallow areas and coral reefs. Another amazing fact about this turtle is that the females will lay about 50 eggs at a time, and each egg is about the same size as that of the Leatherback! This means that the hatchlings are large, which is great because it means that they can avoid predators easier.

Archie Carr first observed sea turtles in 1947 while teaching biology in Honduras, in Central America, and it was love at first sight. In the 1950’s his pioneering sea turtle research in another Central American Country, Costa Rica, led to the establishment of Tortuguero National Park, an important turtle nesting beach. His work also led to the founding of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, established to study and protect sea turtles.

In the 1960’s, Carr launched “Operation Green Turtle” with the help of the United States Navy. The project distributed green sea turtle eggs to beaches all over the Gulf of Mexico in an effort to repopulate the Caribbean Sea with turtles. Carr tagged sea turtles so that he could learn more about their mysterious migrations. Archie Carr also recognized that is sea turtles were to survive; their habitat would need to be protected. That is why he became outspoken in his opposition to ocean pollution.
Dr. Carr spent many years as a professor at the University of Florida. He wrote 120 scientific papers and became known as the “father of sea turtle research.” Though he died in 1987, his legacy lives on in Florida’s Archie Carr national Wildlife Refuge, a 20 mile beach and sea turtle nesting site. Carr’s legacy also inspired the public to take up the challenge of saving the worlds sea turtles.

Some species of sea turtles nest in large groups called arribadas. This is a Spanish word meaning arrival. Arribadas of Kemps Ridley turtles were once reported to have hundreds of thousands of females nesting at the same time. Little is known about how sea turtles communicate with one another. When they are nesting, leatherback turtles make several different sounds. Some are like sighs and some are like belches.

Very little is known about sea turtle mating. Scientists are not really sure how mates find or choose each other. They also do not know if the mates stay together for a while or if they leave each other right away. It is known however that the only true social interaction occurs during courtship and mating. Scientists do know that the male will test the females receptivity by nuzzling her head and gently biting her neck and flippers.

Reluctant females may fold their hind flippers together. If the female is willing however, the male will mount her and grip the front of her shell with his forelimbs and curl his tail under his shell. The mating may take place on the ocean bottom, the surface or in open water. The mating will occur about 30 days before the female begins to nest.

The leatherback turtle is one of the most unique turtles alive, and this is not because if its size! The leatherback turtle also lacks a hard shell. It has instead a shell that is rubbery or leather like (hence the name). The carapace of the leatherback turtle is about 1.6 inches thick; it is made of tough oily tissue. It feels like rubber and has ridges. The large quantities of oil most likely has some function in avoiding the “bends” on deep dives. It may also help with insulation, allowing the leatherbacks to remain active and sustain a body temperature as high as 75 degrees in water as cold as 43 degrees, something a reptile is not supposed to be able to do.

Adult leatherbacks do not all have the same color pattern. Their leathery skin is mostly black with pale spots, which vary in number. Their belly is a patterned pinkish- white and black. The hatchlings are mostly black with stripes of white on their backs. They are covered with scales. The scales disappear as the hatchlings grow up. Their flippers are black with white edges.

Leatherback turtles are amazing divers! They are able to dive to below 3,300 feet deep, which is possibly the greatest depth for any air breathing vertebrate. Only the sperm whale and elephant seals may match or exceed the leatherback’s deep dives. So what draws them so deep? Well jellyfish is certainly a possibility. While it seems rather unlikely that such a large animal would subsist on almost nothing but jellyfish, but it appears to be the case.

A leatherbacks mouth is specifically designed for its jellyfish diet. First, the turtle sucks in its food by expanding its throat. To retain the soft food, the mouth contains numerous stiff, three inch spines that point backward and the six foot esophagus is lined with backward- pointing spines. The razor- sharp, notched jaws are also well adapted for cutting and holding soft prey like jellyfish. Their jellyfish diet is sometimes a problem, as they sometimes mistake discarded plastic bags floating in the sea for jellyfish. This plastic does a great deal of harm for the turtles as it cuts their skin and sometimes hurts them.

A hungry young leatherback may eat twice its weight in jellyfish in a day! The leatherbacks have also been known to graze as far north as Labrador and Alaska. Leatherbacks have been recorded feeding as far as 3,100 miles from their nesting grounds!

Another great thing about Leatherbacks is their amazing speed! They have powerful front flippers, yet they lack the normal claws ( they are the only sea turtle without them). Its head and carapace join smoothly together like a seamed barrel. This makes it easier for them to track through the water at high speeds.

Leatherbacks nest in Florida from April through July. The mating occurs prior to or during the migration from the cooler climates. You will be extremely lucky if you spot a Leatherback nesting, records report that only between 38 and 188 leatherbacks nests annually in Florida.

The Kemps Ridley turtle has five pairs of costal plates on its back, and its carapace is often as wide as it is long. Adult Kemp Ridley’s weigh between 85 and 100 pounds. The carapace is dark gray or grayish-brown in the young, olive green in adults. The Kemps Ridley is considered to be the rarest and most endangered of all sea turtles. In the U.S the juveniles range from Texas to Maine but they are unknown on the pacific coast.

The Kemps Ridley is a carnivore and its favorite food is blue crabs. They also eat jellyfish, clams, fish, and mussels. It is estimated that it takes about seven to fifteen years for the turtle to mature. Both male and female Kemps Ridley will meet off the beach to mate. The females will remain just offshore and crawl onto the beaches only under certain conditions: high surf and strong winds from the Northeast between April and June.

When there were thousand of them, the females all nested on the beach within hours of each other, then returned to the water. These mass nesting’s are called arribadas (derived from the Spanish word for arrivals). They occur several times a season. What the mysterious cues are that finally lure the Kemp’s Ridley to the shore, and its significance, are not well understood. Today with only a few hundred females left, the arribadas are fitful and small, and many turtles nest singly. Furthermore the Kemps Ridley nests during the day, not at night as other turtles do.

The hatchlings break through their eggshells on their own, using a special tooth called a caruncle. This tooth falls out shortly afterward. The eggs are not hard-shelled like chicken eggs but are softer and leathery feeling. Amazingly, the temperature of the sand will determine whether a baby turtle will be male or female. The hotter the sand, the more eggs will be females, the cooler the sand, the more will be males.

Once they leave the egg, the young turtles spend up to forty eight hours underground absorbing their egg-yolk sacs. Then they begin to struggle toward the surface of the beach. At this moment they are the most vulnerable to predators on the beach. Fortunately nature has provided these creatures with some sort of protection. On a sunny day, they may get too hot and stop moving. When things cool down in the evening, they will start to move again. As a result, they will leave in the darkness, where it is safer.

As they enter the sea, these omnivores will feed on almost anything they can find.. In there early years, they swim quite a lot but are mostly swept around by sea currents in the open ocean. The sea turtles will not travel far from their feeding ground until they have reached sexual maturity. Since juveniles never leave the water during this stage of their lives, little is known about them.