Interesting Sea Turtle Facts

• The ridley sea turtle is the only sea turtle that nests during daylight hours.
• The leatherback sea  turtle has interlocking pieces of bone, like a jigsaw puzzle, directly under its thick leathery back.
• The loggerhead sea turtle may swim 40 miles a day in its search for food.
• Sea turtles grow slowly. A female loggerhead sea turtle can’t lay eggs unbtil shes between 15 and 30 years old.
• Some scientist tag sea turtles with stainless steel flipper tags to track them. One tagged sea turtle was found in the Azores that had been tagged and released in Brazil, 4000 miles away.
• Some scientists estimate the world sea turtle population has dropped in half over the last 20 years.
• One year the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida helped rescue and release more than 146, 000 baby sea turtles.
• Unlike many other turtle species, sea turtles cannot pull their heads into their shells.
• The sex of a turtle is affected by the temperature of its own egg during incubation. Turtle nests incubated at warmer temperatures tend to produce more females.
• One way to tell male and female leatherbacks apart is from the top of their heads. Males have a pink patch there, and females do not.
• Leatherback sea turtles are very difficult to keep in captivity. They tend to swim almost continuously, banging their heads into the sides of their enclosures.
• Instead of hard shells, leatherback turtles have a rubbery shell covered by a think skin.
• Fewer than 1 in 1000 green turtles lives from egg to adulthood.
• At rest, a green sea turtles heart may beat just once every nine minutes.