green sea turtle
| Common name green sea turtle |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Scientific name Chelonia mydas | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Local name pawikan | ||||||||||||||||||||
Taxonomic information
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Physical Description Green sea turtles can grow pretty big, growing up to 91 cm long and weighing between 136 to 159 kg. Their carapace can be rusty reddish brown, to olive, to light brown with dark mottling. | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
Biology and Life History
Get their name from the color of their body fat - their body fat is green because of their adult diet of seagrass and algae. As adults, they are the only herbivorous sea turtles. As juveniles, they feed on jellyfish, crabs, sponges, snails, worms, algae, and seagrass. All sea turtles share the same general life history. Males wait in the shallow water for the females returning to the beach where they were born. After copulation, the female goes ashore and chooses a site to lay her eggs. She digs her body pit using her front flippers and bottle-shaped egg pit using her rear flippers. She lays her Ping-Pong ball-sized eggs in the egg pit and covers them up with sand. The eggs incubate for approximately 60 days then hatch. The temperature of the sand determines the sex of the hatchlings: higher temperatures produce more females, while lower temperatures produce more males and have a longer incubation time. The minutes-long journey from the beach to the sea is the most dangerous time in a turtle hatchling's life. In that short journey, the hatchlings are picked off by crabs, seabirds, and other predators. Adult turtles are only preyed on by sharks and humans. |
||||||||||||||||||||
| Habitat and Ecology Juveniles are pelagic, while adults live in coastal areas. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Distribution tropical areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Where it is found in El Nido All around Bacuit Bay | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
Remarks
One of 5 sea turtle species found in El Nido. The green sea turtle and hawksbill sea turtle are the 2 most common species of sea turtle in El Nido. |
||||||||||||||||||||
| Status active | ||||||||||||||||||||
| References |
green sea turtle Images
 |
 |
|
Latest sightings
Total no. of sightings: 264