Sea Turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea) inhabit all the world's oceans except the Arctic.

Distribution

The superfamily Chelonioidea has a worldwide distribution; sea turtles can be found in all oceans except for the polar regions. Some species travel between oceans. The Flatback turtle is found solely on the northern coast of Australia.

Biology

Air breathers

Sea turtles are almost always submerged but breathe air. With a single explosive exhalation and rapid inhalation, sea turtles can quickly refill their lungs when they surface. Their lungs have adapted to permit rapid exchange of oxygen and to avoid trapping gases during deep dives. During their routine green and loggerhead turtles dive for about 4 to 5 minutes and surface to breathe for 1 to 3 seconds, although loggerhead turtles have been known to often surface for a longer period of time.

Turtles can rest or sleep underwater for several hours at a time but submergence time is much shorter while hunting or to escape predators. Activity and stress affect breath-holding ability, which is why turtles drown in shrimp trawls and other fishing gear within a relatively short time. Turtles must emerge while breeding, given the extra level of activity.

Life history

The lifespan of sea turtles has been speculated at 80 years.

After about 3 years of maturing, adult female sea turtles return to land to nest at night. Different species of sea turtles exhibit various levels of philopatry. In the extreme case, females return to the beach where they hatched. This can take place every two to four years in maturity. They make from one to eight nests per season.

The mature nesting female hauls herself onto the beach and finds suitable sand on which to create a nest. Using her hind flippers, she digs a circular hole deep. After the hole is dug, the female then starts filling the nest with a clutch of soft-shelled eggs one by one until she has deposited around 50 to 200 eggs, depending on the species. Some species have been reported to lay 250 eggs like hawksbill. After laying, she re-fills the nest with sand, re-sculpting and smoothing the surface until it is relatively undetectable visually. The whole process takes thirty to sixty minutes. She then returns to the ocean, leaving the eggs untended.
The hatchling's gender depends on the sand temperature. Lighter sands maintain higher temperatures, which decreases incubation time and results in more female hatchlings.

Incubation takes about two months. The eggs in one nest hatch together over a very short period of time.When ready, hatchlings tear their shells apart with their snout and dig through the sand. Once they reach the surface, they instinctively head towards the sea. Only a very small proportion of each hatch (usually .01%) succeed, because local opportunist predators such as the common seagull gorge on the new turtles.

The survivors then proceed into the open ocean. In 1987 Carr discovered that the young of Chelonia mydas and Caretta caretta spent a great deal of their pelagic lives in floating sargassum beds, where there are thick mats of unanchored seaweed. Within these beds, they found ample shelter and food. In the absence of sargassum beds, turtle young feed in the vicinity of upwelling "fronts". In 2007, Reich determined that green turtle hatchlings spend the first three to five years of their lives in pelagic waters. In the open ocean, pre-juveniles of this particular species were found to feed on zooplankton and smaller nekton before they are recruited into inshore seagrass meadows as obligate herbivores.
Instead of nesting individually like the other species, Ridley turtles come ashore en masse, known as an "arribada" (arrival). With the Kemp's Ridley this occurs during the day.

Salt gland

Sea turtles possess a salt excretory gland at the corner of the eye, in the nostrils, or in the tongue, depending upon the species; chelonian salt glands are found in the corner of the eyes in leatherback turtles. Due to the iso-osmotic makeup of jellyfish and the other gelatinous prey upon which sea turtles subsist, sea turtle diets are high in salt; chelonian salt gland excretions are almost entirely composed of sodium chloride1500-1800 mosmoll-1 (Marshall and Cooper, 1988; Nicolson and Lutz, 1989; Reina and Cooper, 2000).

Importance to humans

thumb|280px|"Manner in which Natives of the East Coast strike turtle." Near [[Cooktown, Australia. From Phillip Parker King's Survey. 1818.]]
Marine turtles are caught worldwide, although it is illegal to hunt most species in many countries. A great deal of intentional marine turtle harvests worldwide are for food.

Many parts of the world have long considered sea turtles to be fine dining. Ancient Chinese texts dating to the fifth century B.C. describe sea turtles as exotic delicacies. Many coastal communities around the world depend on sea turtles as a source of protein, often harvesting several turtles at once and keeping them alive on their backs until needed. Coastal peoples gather turtle eggs for consumption.

Turtles are popular in Mexico as boot material and food.

To a much lesser extent, specific species of marine turtles are targeted not for their flesh, but for their shells. Tortoiseshell, a traditional decorative ornamental material used in Japan and China, comes from the carapace scutes of the hawksbill turtle. Ancient Greeks and ancient Romans processed turtle scutes (primarily from the hawksbill) for various articles and ornaments used by their elites, such as combs and brushes. The skin of the flippers are prized for use as shoes and assorted leather-goods.

The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals. They often depicted sea turtles in their art.

Sea turtles enjoy immunity from the sting of the deadly box jellyfish and regularly eat them, helping keep tropical beaches safe for humans.

Conservation

thumb|left|Legal notice posted by nest at [[Boca Raton, Florida]]

All species of sea turtles are listed as threatened or endangered. The leatherback, Kemp's Ridley, and Hawksbill turtles are critically endangered. The Olive Ridley and green turtles are endangered, and the loggerhead is threatened. The flatback's conservation status is unclear due to a lack of data.

One of the most significant threats now comes from bycatch due to imprecise fishing methods. Donnelly points to long-lining as a major cause of accidental sea turtle death, There is also black market demand for tortoiseshell for both decoration and supposed health benefits.
Turtles must surface to breathe. Caught in a fisherman's net, they are unable to surface and thus suffocate. In early 2007, almost a thousand sea turtles were killed inadvertently in the Bay of Bengal over the course of a few months after netting.
However, some relatively inexpensive changes to fishing techniques, such as slightly larger hooks and traps from which sea turtles can escape, can dramatically cut the mortality rate. Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDS) have reduced sea turtle bycatch in shrimp nets by 97 percent. Another danger comes from marine debris, especially from abandoned fishing nets in which they can become entangled.

Beach development is another area which threatens sea turtles. Since many turtles return to the same beach each time to nest, development can disrupt the cycle. There has been a movement to protect these areas, in some cases by special police. In some areas, such as the east coast of Florida, conservationists dig up turtle eggs and relocate them to fenced nurseries to protect them from beach traffic.

Since hatchlings find their way to the ocean by crawling towards the brightest horizon, they can become disoriented on developed stretches of coastline. Lighting restrictions can prevent lights from shining on the beach and confusing hatchlings. Turtle-safe lighting uses red or amber LED light, invisible to sea turtles, in place of white light.

Another major threat to sea turtles is black market trade in eggs and meat. This is a problem throughout the world, but especially a concern in the Philippines, India, Indonesia and the coastal nations of Latin America. Estimates reach as high as 35,000 turtles killed a year in Mexico and the same number in Nicaragua. Conservationists in Mexico and the United States have launched "Don't Eat Sea Turtle" campaigns in order to reduce this trade in sea turtle products. These campaigns have involved figures such as Dorismar, Los Tigres del Norte and Maná. Turtles are often consumed during the Catholic holiday, Lent, even though they are reptiles, not fish. Consequently, conservation organizations have written letters to the Pope asking that he declare turtles meat.
Climate change may also cause a threat to sea turtles. Since sand temperature at nesting beaches defines the sex of a turtle while developing in the egg, there is concern that rising temperatures may produce too many females. However, more research is needed to understand how climate change might affect sea turtle gender distribution and what other possible threats it may pose.
Fibropapillomatosis disease causes tumors in sea turtles.

Injured sea turtles are sometimes rescued and rehabilitated by professional organizations such as the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, the Marine Mammal Center in Northern California, and the ClearWater Marine Aquarium in Clearwater Florida
and the Sea Turtle Inc. organization in South Padre Island, TX. One such turtle, named Nickel for the coin that was found lodged in her throat, lives at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

In the Caribbean, researchers are having some success in assisting a comeback. In September 2007, Corpus Christi, Texas wildlife officials found 128 Kemp's ridley sea turtle nests on Texas beaches, a record number, including 81 on North Padre Island (Padre Island National Seashore) and 4 on Mustang Island. Wildlife officials released 10,594 Kemp's ridleys hatchlings along the Texas coast this year.

Also in 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a determination that the leatherback, the hawksbill and the Kemp's Ridley populations were endangered while that of green turtles and olive ridleys were threatened.
In Southeast Asia, the Philippines has had several initiatives dealing with the issue of turtle conservation. In 2007, the province of Batangas in the Philippines declared the catching and eating of Pawikans illegal. However, the law seems to have had little effect as Pawikan eggs are still in demand in Batangan markets. In September 2007, several Chinese poachers were apprehended off the Turtle Islands in the country's southernmost province of Tawi-Tawi. The poachers had collected more than a hundred sea turtles, along with 10,000 turtle eggs.

Fragile ecosystems

Sea turtles play key roles in two ecosystem types that are critical to them as well as to humans—oceans and beaches/dunes. In the oceans, for example, sea turtles, especially green sea turtles, are one of very few creatures (manatees are another) that eat the sea grass that grows on the sea floor. Sea grass must be kept short to remain healthy, and beds of healthy sea grass are essential breeding and development areas for many species of fish and other marine life. A decline or loss of sea grass beds would damage these populations, triggering a chain reaction and negatively impact marine and human life.

Beaches and dunes form a fragile ecosystem that depends on vegetation to protect against erosion. Eggs, hatched or unhatched, and hatchlings that fail to make it into the ocean are all nutrient sources for dune vegetation . Every year, sea turtles lay countless eggs on beaches. Along one twenty-mile (32 km) stretch of beach in Florida alone, for example, more than 150,000 pounds of eggs are laid each year.

Taxonomy and evolution

Sea turtles, along with other turtles and tortoises, are part of the Order Testudines.

The seven living species of sea turtles are: flatback, green sea turtle, Hawksbill, Kemp's Ridley, Leatherback, Loggerhead and Olive Ridley.The East Pacific subpopulation of the green turtle was previously classified as a separate species, the black turtle, but DNA evidence indicates that it is not evolutionarily distinct from the green turtle. All species except the leatherback are in the family Cheloniidae. The leatherback belongs to the family Dermochelyidae and is its only member.

The species are primarily distinguished by their anatomy: for instance, the prefrontal scales on the head, the number of and shape of scutes on the carapace, and the type of inframarginal scutes on the plastron. The leatherback is the only sea turtle that does not have a hard shell; instead it bears a mosaic of bony plates beneath its leathery skin. It is the largest sea turtle, measuring in length at maturity, and in width, weighing up to . Other species are smaller, being mostly and proportionally narrower.
Sea turtles constitute a single radiation that became distinct from all other turtles at least 110 million years ago.

From

• Family Cheloniidae

• * Chelonia mydas

• * Eretmochelys imbricata

• * Natator depressus

• * Caretta caretta

• * Lepidochelys kempii

• * Lepidochelys olivacea

• Family Dermochelyidae

• * Dermochelys coriacea

See also

• Sea Turtle Association of Japan, Kuroshima Research Station

• Shrimp turtle case

Additional reading

• Davidson, Osha Gray. (2001.) "Fire in the Turtle House: The Green Sea Turtle and the Fate of the Ocean." United States: United States of Public Affairs. ISBN 1-5864-8199-1.

• Spotila, James R. (2004). "Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation." Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-8007-6.

• Witherington, Blair E. (2006). “Sea Turtles: An Extraordinary Natural History of Some Uncommon Turtles.” St. Paul: Voyageur Press. ISBN 0-7603-2644-4.