Colors From Turkey

Sea Turtles have been around for 95 million years. Their ancestors were giant land turtles that entered the sea ages ago when the great dinosaurs lived. The first sea turtles looked little like those of today. It took millions of years for sea turtles to change, for legs to become pad-shaped flippers and for heavy, bulky bodies to flatten into lighter, streamlined shapes. The dinosaurs and the giant land turtles are gone forever; we can see only their fossil bones in museums. But, somehow, sea turtles have lived on.

Seven different kinds still swim in warm and temperate oceans around the world. They spend their whole lives in the water except for the brief times the females come onto land to nest and lay their eggs. The sea turtles share the sea with fish, whales, other sea creatures and you and me. In the seas surrounding Turkey, two species of sea turtles live: Loggerheads (Caretta caretta) and Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas).

When Chirstopher Columbus discovered the New World, there were millions of sea turtles in the Caribbean Sea. Columbus and other explorers, traders, settlers, and pirates who followed him soon found out that one kind of sea turtle had especially tasty meat. This turtle was brown all over, grew to about three feet in lenght, and often weighed some 300 pounds. It grazed in shallow beds of grass, or turtle grass, near the shore. Sailors could easily capture the gentle animal.

They could turn it over onto its back so it was helpless, tie its flippers, and keep it aboard their ships to slaughter when they needed fresh meat. The fat inside this turtle’s body was green from the grass it ate, so it was named the green turtle. It is the only sea turtle that lives only on plants. Today, hundreds of years later, green turtles are still hunted and taken. Fewer and fewer remain.

The loggerhead turtle is slightly smaller than the green. A loggerhead may weigh between 300 and 400 pounds. It eats crabs and other sea animals for its food. The loggerhead hunts near coral reefs and rocks. You can recognize it by its large, thick head and broad, short neck. The loggerhead, like other sea turtles, cannot pull its head into its shell the way land turtles can. Its shell is like a suit of armour, but its head and flippers are unprotected.

Certain sharks and killer whales may attack these parts, but the loggerhead is big and fast and has few natural enemies. Colour its carapace and skin reddish-brown and the plastron yellow.

A female green turtle arrived offshore at her nesting beach alone at night. She had mated earlier with a male green turtle nearby in the water. It was time for her to lay her eggs. She might nest three or four times during a single nesting season. Though she is fast and well suited to the water, she is slow, awkward, and in danger on land. The female dragged herself out of the sea and onto the beach up beyond the reach of high tide.

She dug a pit for her body with her flippers. She nestled in it and used her back flippers, like shovels, to scoop out a bottle-shaped hole. Now she drops about one hundred white, leathery eggs that look like ping pong balls into this hole. When she finished, she will cover the nest with sand and slowly lumber back to the sea, leaving a trail behind her. After she is gone, poachers may follow this trail and steal her eggs… or a hungry fox may feat on them.

The rays of the sun heat the beach, warming the turtle’s eggs buried in the sand. The eggs develop in the nest. They are ready to hatch in about two months. The patchlings pick at their shells with a small, sharp point at the front of their snout—this particular part will disappear after hatching. The hatchlings crack their shells. All must hatch at almost the same time, for all must share the work to escape from the nest.

aThe baby turtles scrape away at the sand overhead. The sand falls upon their empty shells, forming a platform that allows the hatchlings to rise. In a few days, they have scraped their way up to the roof of the nest. Then at night, or in the early morning, little dark heads and flippers wriggle out onto the beach. Two-inch long hatchlings crawl away and look for the sea.

The hatchlings sense the direction of the sea. The brightness over the water attracts them. They stream from the nest and begin their race to the sea. Full of life, but defenseless, they struggle clumsily across the beach. Their shells are soft and offer little protection. Swift lizards attack them. Armies of crabs pick them off. Sea birds gather and catch the tiny turtles in their sharp beaks and feast on them. Few hatchlings make it to the water.

And most of these will be eaten by fish: snappers, groupers, jacks, and sharp-toothed barracudas. Only one or two of the hatchlings may live. Where they go to spend their first year of life is a mystery. It is one of nature’s many secrets. Green turtles, for example, are not seen again until they are one year old when they are found feeding offshore in turtle grass beds. They are then as big as a dinner plate.

Where Sea Turtles Nest?

Sea turtles nest in a wide, warm belt around the world. They all return to the same beach where they themselves hatched in order to lay their eggs when they reach maturity. This ability to swim sometimes thousands of kilometres to reach their beach of origin is still a mystery to the scientists who think that their sense of smell plays an important role in this.

All sea turtles in the world—the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pacific populations are endangered species. Turtle specialists think that some of the Mediterranean sea turtles migrate from the Atlantic whereas some only stay in the Mediterranean basin.

Conservationists and researchers try to determine sea turtle migration routes by placing special talgs on the turtles.

Sea Turtles? Or Turtle Products?

The sea turtle is disappearing. And once it is gone, it will be gone forever. One reason it is disappearing is because people use parts of turtles for food or, more often, to make different products. The hawksbill is prized for its carapace to make tortoiseshell combs, brush handles, eyeglass frames, buttons, hair clips, and jewellery. Hawksbill and green turtles are killed so they can be stuffed and hung on walls as decorations.

Green turtles are slaughtered for their meat and in order to make turtle soup. The skin from the neck and flippers of greens and olive ridleys is made into leather for purses and shoes. Fat from turtle bodies is used in soaps and make-up creams. Instead of using plentiful resources for these products, the world’s few remaining sea turtles are taken.

People who live near the shore have always hunted sea turtles to help feed their families. A fisherman might harpoon a sea turtle and take it home to eat. Groups of men netted sea turtles when they rose to breathe and brought them back to their villages for food. For years, when sea turtles were plentiful, such hunting seemed to have little effect on the numbers of turtles. But the demand for sea turtles kept growing.

Money could be earned hunting and selling sea turtles. Money could be earned selling things made from turtles. Turtle hunting became profitable.So hunters took hundreds of turtles from the sea and even from the land, when they were nesting. Fewer and fewer sea turtles were left until they were almost all gone. Laws now protect sea turtles and forbid trade in turtle products. But not everyone obeys these laws.

Commercial fishing boats around the world provide food from the sea for people. These vessels cruise coastal waters, dragging large nets along the sea bottom to gather in their catch. Trawling or scraping of the sea bottom is very detrimental to sea life in general because it destroys the breeding grounds of fish, shrimp and all marine life. Unfortunately, sea turtles are often caught accidentally in these nets. The great funnel-shaped nets of shrimp trawlers, for example, trap many loggerhead turtles. The turtles are swept along in the nets with the shrimp.

They are not able to come up to the surface to breathe, and they drown. So the small numbers of sea turtles are reduced even further. A way has to be found to solve the problem. Shrimp fishermen along the south-eastern coast of the United States are helping to find an answer. They are testing newly-designed nets that let the shrimp in but keep the turtles out.

A loggerhead turtle crawls from the sea to the edge of a beach in Side on the Turkish South Coast. She pauses. What does she see? Apartment houses and hotels take up much of the beach. Only a narrow strip of sand remains, and it is crowded with people. In some places cement has been poured across the sand clear to the edge of the water. There is no place for the turtle to nest. The turtle goes back to the sea and returns at night. Hundreds of lights shine out from windows. The beach is bright. Elsewhere, along the coast, another turtle finds a small, undeveloped piece of beach and lays her eggs.

When they hatch, the young turtles crawl toward the brightness, but it is not the sea. It is the light of street lamps along a road that passes nearby. The hatchlings will die in the burning sun later that day. Once there were hundreds of miles of open shore for loggerhead sea turtles to nest on safely. It is different now.

From “Sea Turtles in every Aspect“,
a publication of The Society for The Protection of Nature