A young sea turtle is called a Hatchling. A sea turtle never sees its mother or father. After the female lays her eggs she returns to the water and does not go back to the nest. Once hatched each young sea turtle is on its own. These hatchlings face many dangers on the beach and in the ocean. Once in the ocean, they will spend the rest of their lives there, with the females coming out only to lay their eggs in the sand.

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.