Wednesday, August 24, 2011

A Day in the Life of a Sea Turtle

One of our guests spotted a sea turle while out on our Full Day Sail and we wondered what he would say to us if he could... *thinking*


Here's what we think he'd say:


Hi! I'm a sea turtle and live in the beautiful blue waters of the US and British Virgin Islands. There is just so much to explore here and not to mention the view and food is amazing. Let me give you a tour of a day in the life of a turtle.

Its normally a beautiful sunny day when my family and I wake up and swim around the reefs eating algae, sea grass or jelly fish for my meals, (so please no plastic in the water it looks like jelly fish to me and my family).

Then at times we receive visitors that are not from the ocean but from all around the world who come to see all of turtle- kind!

Most of our new found friends have never seen us up close and get a bit excited (while we are just swimming around our home the coral reefs) while snorkeling on by, on passing tours like this one (New Horizons Full Day Sail), taking our picture!  We are all very flattered but would like a little space since if you touch our shell the oils from your fingers can cause fungal diseases to our shell.  No offense!

We enjoy the pace of life here, just sunning and relaxing, but at certain times we have a population boost and that's hard work for our lady turtles! Our moms to be travel a long way to where they themselves were hatched and find an area and then they start to dig.

After digging to a satisfactory depth (around 40-50 centimeters and  16-20 inches deep) these mama turtles lay over 150 or more eggs! This whole process takes around 30-60 min. and the gender of our hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the sand!  Lighter sands maintain higher temperatures and decreases incubation times resulting in more lady turtles.



I'm sad to say most of our lil' ones do not make it due to predators, pollution, and a variety of other elements with only 0.01% who do make it and so to help us we hatch at night to avoid sea gulls and other predators.

We would love to see you and educate you more on the life of sea turtles. We are sprinkled all over here in the US and British Virgin Islands so here is an open invitation to you to come on down here and enjoy yourself turtle style!

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