The olive ridley is the most common sea turtle in the world’s oceans—there are currently about 800,000 nesting females – but much information on this species is still lacking. Olive ridleys spend most of their time in the open ocean feeding at the surface. But they are also known to dive to depths of up to 656 feet (200 meters) in search of food. They are listed as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN’s Red List. Conservation efforts over the past several decades are showing success. The protection of nesting beaches, reduction of bycatch in fisheries, and prohibitions on killing sea turtles and collecting their eggs have led to increasing numbers of green turtles nesting in the United States. The number of nests has been trending upward in Florida (North Atlantic DPS) and in Hawaii (Central North Pacific DPS).

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During this labor-intensive struggle, she can be easily disturbed and sometimes will abandon the nesting attempt. Next in the existing evolutionary timeline is Odontochelys semitestacea, a toothed turtle that lived 220 million years ago and was discovered in 2008. Not only is this turtle believed to be the first species to venture into the marine world, but it is also a key specimen in the discovery of how the turtle’s shell evolved. Instead of a fully formed top shell like modern sea turtles, this animal had expanded ribs that were precursors of a shell. Discovering Odontochelys helped to solve a long debate between scientists about turtle shell evolutionary history.

The temperature of the sand during the middle portion of the days that the sea turtle eggs incubate will determine whether the egg hatches a boy or a girl turtle. You can tell sea turtle species apart by the color, shape, and pattern of their shells (called scutes) and the pattern of the scales on their faces. Each species has unique “scute patterns” on their shells and faces that offer the only surefire way to distinguish between species. Sea turtles are incredible animals that inspire affection and curiosity. But because they live most of their lives at sea, they are shrouded in mystery.

• Loggerhead turtles are named for their large heads that support powerful jaw muscles, allowing them to crush hard-shelled prey like clams and sea urchins.
• Their breath-holding abilities allow them to dive deep in the ocean to find food.
• The large and strong front flippers act like paddles to propel them through the water, while the smaller back flippers function as rudders to help them steer.
• They are listed as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN’s Red List.
• Over the last 200 years, human activities have caused a significant decline in sea turtles.
• Kemp’s ridley sea turtles only use a very limited number of nesting sites.

Sea Turtle Life Cycle

Pregnant females trying to make it back to a submerged home beach may not have many other options to go to lay their eggs. If they lay their eggs on an unsuitable beach, the nests stand less chance of remaining undisturbed and successfully producing hatchlings. The exact effects climate change will have on the global ocean system is unknown. But we do know that the oceans will get warmer and sea levels will rise. Sea turtles require decades to reach sexual maturity, so their population size takes a toll from the hunting Tecolutla turtle of adults and juveniles, or the harvesting of eggs. Yet, it is still legal in many countries today to kill sea turtles.

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The baby sea turtles break free of the egg shell, dig through the sand, and crawl into the sea. However, the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle commonly hatches during the day. Sea turtle nests that hatch during the day are more vulnerable to predators, and may encounter more human activity on the beach. Kemp’s ridley, olive ridley, loggerhead and hawksbill sea turtles are omnivorous their entire life, eating a wide variety of both plants and animal life. Seagrasses, seaweed, sponges, mollusks, worms and fish are included in their diet.

Leatherbacks also retain warmth because of their dark color and layers of fatty tissue and oil that act as heat absorbers and insulation. The leatherback has a much higher metabolism than other sea turtles; their huge muscles create a lot of heat when they are active. The temperature[158] of the sand has a big impact on the sex of the sea turtle. This is not common with other animals but it is with sea turtles. Warmer or hot sand usually makes the sea turtle female and the cooler the sand usually makes male. Climate change has made the temperatures much hotter than they should be.

Many other ocean organisms use sea turtle shells as a home or a feeding station. Small organisms, called epibionts, can live on the surface of a sea turtle’s shell. In fact, more than 100 different epibionts have been identified living on loggerhead sea turtle shells. If a sea turtle gets too many hitchhikers on its shell, it can become weighed down and have a harder time moving. Thankfully for sea turtles, certain fish love to eat the epibionts—the sea turtle gets a cleaning while the specialized fish swim away with a nice meal. Every few years, adult sea turtles migrate between their feeding grounds and their nesting beaches and offshore mating habitats.

In Texas, volunteers can get hands on with sea turtle recovery at Padre Island National Seashore or one of the permitted rehabilitation centers. These organizations rely on volunteers to patrol for nesting turtles, rescue sick and injured turtles, conduct beach clean ups and more. One of the recovery strategies outlined in the plan is the need to maintain an active stranding network. As a result, the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network was formally established by NOAA Fisheries in 1980 to document strandings of sea turtles along the coast. Finally, beach patrollers found the first tagged Kemp’s ridley returned to nest on Padre Island in 1996. Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtles are considered critically endangered by the ICUN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources). A famous film of one nesting event in the 1940s shows over 40,000 females coming ashore on one beach.

The maximum depth ever recorded for a sea turtle dive was a leatherback that dove 1,200 m (3937 ft). Leatherbacks are able to do this because of their adaptations for deep diving. Unlike the other species of sea turtles, leatherbacks have a flexible shell that absorbs nitrogen and collapsible lungs that allow them to compress themselves while diving to cope with the pressure change. The turtles have large stores of oxygen in their blood and muscles and a drastically slowed heart rate to conserve oxygen while diving. Coral reefs are majorly impacted by the rising temperatures and a lot of sea turtles diet is coral reefs or in the coral reef. With the reefs dying, the sea life around it also does, impacting many animals.