; Jimi Rock's Sea School
Word: Green Sea Turtle
You need to upgrade your Flash Player This is replaced by the Flash content. Place your alternate content here and users without the Flash plugin or with Javascript turned off will see this. Content here allows you to leave out noscript tags. Include a link to bypass the detection if you wish.

The beak of a Green Sea Turtle is unhooked, distinguishing it from their close relative, the Hawksbill Turtle.

The Green Sea Turtle is the largest of all the hard-shelled sea turtles.

• The Green Turtles are found throughout tropical and subtropical oceans worldwide. There are two major subpopulations. One is in the Atlantic and the other is in the Eastern Pacific. Each population is genetically-distinct and has its own set of nesting and feeding grounds.

• The Green Sea Turtle's nesting grounds in the United States include Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

• The Green Sea Turtle is one of the oldest and most studied of all sea turtles.

• The Green Sea Turtle is a large and well-protected animal. They have few predators, including humans and sharks. Newly hatched turtles are preyed upon by crabs, small mammals and even some birds.

• The female Green Sea Turtle lays between 100 and 200 eggs in a hole in the sand and returns to the sea. The eggs hatch after 45 to 75 days. They hatch at night and the tiny newborns head for the ocean instinctively. This is the most dangerous time of their lives. A great deal of them never make it as they are eaten by predators. If they do make it to the water, they will spend the next 3 to 5 years as pelagics in the open ocean before returning to the shallows where it may take 25 to 50 years for them to reach full size.

• Green Sea Turtles and all other sea turtles are protected yet many still are hunted for their tasty meat. Their fat and cartilage have also been traditionally used to make turtle soup.

• Before the Green Sea Turtle was added to the Endangered Species List, they were raised in large numbers for human consumption. The Cayman Turtle Farm used to have up to 100,000 turtles at a time and now has about 10,000 and is used as a tourist attraction.

• Green Sea Turtles cannot pull their heads or flippers into their shells like other turtles can!

• Once every two years a female Green Sea Turtle will return to the exact same beach where she was hatched to lay her eggs.

• The Green Sea Turtle gets it's name from the color of the fat under their shell! That's right! They have green fat from eating a vegetarian diet!

• Young Green Sea Turtles are carnivores, eating jellyfish and other invertebrates.

• Adult Green sea turtles are the only turtles that are herbivors or vegetarians, eating algae and sea grasses.

• Green Sea Turtles are the second largest turtle weighing up to 400 pounds (180 kgs). The Leatherback Turtle is the largest.

• In the United States, the Green Sea Turtle is listed as threatened or endangered. Many die from entanglement in discarded fishing gear or from ingesting marine debris, especially plastics.

• This species is protected in the United States under the Endangered Species Act.

• They can be found all over the world in tropical and subtropical seas along the coasts of continents and islands.
JimiRock.com