7 species

Travel thousands of miles every year

They are endangered

Turtles have been alive for more than 200 million years, longer than mammals, birds, crocodiles, snakes and lizards.

Some turtles can live for more than a year without food.

The green sea turtle can stay underwater for over five hours without coming up for air.

When in danger the green turtle can swim almost 20 miles an hour to escape.

The shell of the turtle is what makes it unique.

The shell of a turtle is made up of 60 different bones all connected together. These bony parts of the shell are covered with plates that make the shell stronger.

The turtle’s shell also has nerve endings in it. If you touch the shell, a turtle can feel it. Turtles pull their heads and feet into their shells to protect themselves.

Sea turtles maintain healthy coral reefs, facilitate nutrient cycling from water to land, and balance out the food web.

Turtle maintain healthy seagrass beds and coral reefs, providing key habitat for other marine life, helping to balance food webs and facilitating nutrient cycling from water to land.

Sea turtles graze seagrass beds, which prevent the beds from becoming overgrown with microorganisms, algae, invertebrates, and fungi.

Leatherback sea turtles eat jellyfish. Jellyfish eat fish eggs and smaller fish. If sea turtles decline, there will be more jellyfish, which will eat human food sources

A group of turtles is called a bale.

Historically, turtles have been the symbols of patience and wisdom.

In the Hawaiian the word “honu” means sea turtles and represents long life.

Sea turtles improve their nesting beaches by supplying nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium into dune ecosystems. All of these nutrients are necessary in aiding the growth of vegetation and stabilization of dunes.

They only come on land to lay eggs. When in the eggs, turtles take about 2 months to incubate and their sex is determined by the temperature. Under 29 degrees they become male, over 29 degrees they become female.

A female deposits 50 to 200 (depending on the species) Ping Pong ball shaped-eggs into the egg cavity.

A rise in the sea level will impact sea turtle nesting beaches. Sea turtles' memories are "imprinted" with a magnetic map of the sandy beach where they hatch. This gives them the unique ability to return to that same site decades later to repeat their ancient nesting ritual. With melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels, these beaches are beginning to disappear.

1/3 of turtles stomachs- Besides plastic bags, the turtles had swallowed fishing lines, balloon fragments, spoons, candy wrappers and more.

There is a link between tumors and coastal eutrophication, that is, the enrichment of coastal waters with nutrients from land-based sources of pollution such as wastewater or agricultural fertilizers.