Turtles!

We have been tracking Chelonia Mydas, also known as Green Sea Turtles, for many years now. I’ve been doing some research that might be interesting to you. Let me give you some basic information about Green Sea Turtles: Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Reptilia, Order: Chelonia, Family: Cheloniidae, Genus: Chelonia, Species: Mydas. They are found mainly in Florida and off the cost of Mexico. The adult green sea turtles eat only plants, while the baby green sea turtles eat fish, jelly fish, crustaceans, and algae. Human involvement is a major factor in them becoming endangered and threatened.

Green sea turtles have several adaptations for different things like swimming, diving, respiration, salt secretion, being on land. Their adaptations for swimming are they are strong swimmers and have been recorded to swim as fast as 1.4 mph, their forelimbs are modified into long, paddle-like flippers, and the neck and other limbs aren’t retractile.

The one adaptation I would like to focus on would be their flippers, because I think if the Green Sea Turtle was bred with another sea turtle that was also a strong swimmer, then their flippers could be longer and that would make them even better swimmers than what they already are. Or we could somehow alter them to make them longer because I don’t know how much longer they would be just by breeding green sea turtles with another sea turtle.

I would use the skin of the turtles to make small leather items. We could make purses, wallets, belts, coin purses. We could also dye the turtle skin to make it different colors, so it would be more appealing to our customers. We could even make headbands and little kids shoes as well so that we could appeal to all different customers and not just adults, but children as well. We could also use to other parts of the turtle as well to make jewelry, we could use their fat to make oil, and we could sell their eggs and body parts as meat. We could also give their eggs and meat to orphanages to give them food. Not waste any part of the animal.

The way I would suggest we go about doing this would be to take a green sea turtle and a similar sea turtle and breed the two together and see how this new breed is like the two original breeds. Then once this new breed had babies, we would run test on those to see how these babies are like the original breeds from this new breed.

With this new breed of sea turtles, this would grow the population of sea turtles; they would be very similar to the two original breeds. They would weigh around the same, they would look the same, and then the females would also lay about the same number of eggs as the green sea turtles.

Green Sea Turtles

Swimming mainly in the waters of Florida and off the coast of Mexico, Chelonia Mydas, Green Sea Turtle, can grow to the maximum size of 4 feet and weigh up to 440 pounds. It has a heart shaped shell, small head, and single clawed flippers. This turtle can be found in several different countries and can be found in small numbers in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and in larger numbers in Florida. Belonging to the Cheloniidae (turtle) family of the Animal Kingdom, the Green Sea Turtle prefers fairly shallow waters like in reefs, bays, and inlets. These sea turtles bodies are highly adapted to life in the ocean, and their shells are lighter and more streamlined which allows them to gracefully glide through the water for long distances, in a relatively short amount of time. They have been known to glide through the water as fast as 35 mph. The hatchling green turtle’s diet consists of a variety of plants and animals, but the adult green turtle’s diet consists of exclusively on seagrasses and marine algae. They also prefer open beaches with very little disturbance for their nesting sites to lay their eggs. The nesting season varies with the locality. In the Southeastern U.S., it is roughly June through September. Nesting occurs nocturnally at 2, 3, or 4-year intervals.

Over the past several years sea turtles have long been hunted because their bodies can be used for a variety of things, their shells have been used to make jewelry and ornaments, their skin to make small leather goods, their meat and eggs for food, and their fat for oil. Another cause of them dying  is due to the fact that incidental catch, which is where commercial shrimp fishers use nets that trap and drown more than 10,000 sea turtles each year. Another main cause to them becoming endangered is due to litter and marine debris, especially when they become entangled or the litter is mistaken as food and eaten, because plastics can extremely harmful as they are not easily digested and remain in the turtle's stomachs for long periods of time, releasing toxic substances. Due to all of these dangerous causes this is why the Green Sea Turtles have become endangered and threatened.

Sources:

·         http://www.fws.gov/southwest/es/EndangeredSpecies/lists/ListSpecies.cfm

·         http://www.earthtrust.org/wlcurric/turtles.html