The Life Cycle of a Sea Turtle

I.A.L.T: inform my audience with an explanation.

Did you know, sea turtles have been around since the late Jurassic? That was roughly two hundred and twenty million years ago! leatherback and flatback turtles are the oldest turtle species on earth. There are three main stages that a sea turtle goes through, the egg, childhood, and lastly adulthood. The first stage is the egg stage.

To start off, the mother turtle swims to land and uses her flippers to walk past the high tide line. After that, she uses her flippers again but to dig a small hole in the sand to lay her eggs in. The size of an average egg is a similar size to a leathery ping pong ball. Once they are laid and buried underground, the mother sea turtle makes her way back to the sea. It can take forty five to fifty five days for the eggs to hatch. About twenty percent of the eggs don’t hatch. Once they are hatched the baby sea turtles make their way to the water.

On the way to the water there are many dangers awaiting them, like crabs, seagulls, rubbish, holes and much much more, so roughly fifty percent actually make it to the water. When the baby sea turtles are in the water there are many more dangers awaiting them, like whales, sharks, killer whales, and also when they come to the surface to breathe, they can get taken away by seagulls and birds. So after that time in the water, they eventually grow bigger. From the size of a dinner plate to a dinner table, in other words, childhood to adulthood.

Now the adulthood stage. Sea turtles have a similar lifespan to humans. With human interference, they find it hard to survive. Five turtles survive to breeding age without human interference and Two turtles survive with human interference.

So sea turtles have a pretty hard time trying to survive. If you want to help sea turtles survive reduce the amount of garbage you produce and clean up trash you see on the beach. This is the full life cycle of a sea turtle.