Life Cycle of a Sea Turtle

🐢🐢🐢 The Life Cycle of a Sea Turtle 🐢🐢🐢 

Sea turtles are amazing animals. There are eight different species of sea turtle. The Leatherback, Green, Kemp's Ridley, Hawksbill, Loggerhead, Olive Ridley and Flatback are endangered. The Galapagos Green is not endangered. A male sea turtle will stay underwater its whole life, but a female sea turtle will come out of the water to lay its eggs. But now we have to start with the egg stage.

Eggs

A sea turtle’s eggs are very small, about the size of a ping pong ball. The egg feels leathery. Approximately 1000 eggs get laid. The eggs are buried as deep as the sea turtle's flipper can go. A Leatherback would make a bigger hole for the eggs then the Kemp's Ridley.

Baby Sea Turtle

Once the eggs hatch the baby sea turtles come across their first challenge. Each species of sea turtle have different survival strategies. About 80% get to the water. More Leatherbacks survive then Kemp’s Ridleys. But still 40% that make it to the water perish. Once they get deep they come across more challenges such as sharks, sea birds and killer whales.

Growing up

After a couple of years a sea turtle has many less challenges but there are still dangers for them such as some of the bigger sharks called greats tigers and bulls. Once a sea turtle makes it to adult age they mostly die from pollution such as oil.

Breeding Age

Once a sea turtle gets to breeding age they start the life cycle once again.

Sea turtles have three main life stages. It is the last stage that we humans can help by stopping pollution. We need to do something to help these endangered animals.