See the Sea Turtle?

We went to to the aquarium today and saw the sea turtle that was brought in from Florida.

It was hit by a boat and then bitten by a shark.

The damage from the boat caused air to get in the rear of the shell of the turtle so it can’t dive down from the surface.

Weights have been placed on the turtle’s back so that it can dive, but the weights will eventually fall off as the turtle grows bigger so it will remain in captivity under the care of aquarium officials otherwise it would have little chance of survival in the wild.

About Sea Turtles

It takes decades for sea turtles to reach sexual maturity. After mating at sea, 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, nearly always at night, and finds suitable sand on which to create a nest. Using her hind flippers, she digs a circular hole 40 to 50 centimetres (16 to 20 in) 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, such as the 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. Again, this usually taked place at night, when predators such as seagulls cannot fly.

Once they reach the surface, they instinctively head towards the sea. If, as happens on rare occasions, hatching takes place during daylight, only a very small proportion of each hatch (usually 0.01%) succeed, because local opportunist predators, such as the common seagull, gorge on the new turtles. Thus there is an obvious evolutionary drive to hatch at night, when survival rates on the beach are much higher. Source: Sea turtle. (2010, August 21). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01:33, August 26, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_turtle&oldid=380188521

It is worth noting that in legend Captain Jack Sparrow roped a couple of sea turtles to escape from a deserted island.