What is the most vulnerable point in a sea turtles life?
Definitely when they hatch, because as soon as they hatch they have to run for their lives and they're immediately in danger. The distance from the where they hatch to the water is pretty long for them to run. They are also exposed and are easy prey for seagulls and crabs. Out of hundreds of eggs, only about 5 to 10 actually survive and get to grow up and mate.
What do turtles use to move in water and on land?
Aquatic Turtles have a shell, breathe air with lungs, and they swim in water with their front and back flippers. A female turtle uses its flippers to pull itself up on to the beach from the water, to lay eggs in a dug sand depression chosen for its humidity and suitability for hatching of her eggs, and the subsequent hatchling ‘run’ back into the water. The sandy nest is some defence against predators of the eggs and hatchlings - a long-successful strategy used by turtles world-wide. [The sea is full of predators in the food-chain.]Related semi-aquatic Terrapins have lungs, and clawed feet on 4 legs which poke out of the sides of the shell. Terrapins may spend more time out of the water.Turtles have a tail, smaller in the female than male, [and the tail is mostly to flip away their faeces when pooing in water]. Breathing air into the lungs helps the turtle to rise in the water like a buoyancy float, breathing out it will sink; on land it is heavier, but the female flippers are strong enough to support it for heaving its body weight onto the beach to lay eggs.Land [terrestrial] Tortoises are closely related to reptilian Turtles and Terrapins - read the story about the race between the Tortoise and the Hare !
Why do sea turtles need to lay eggs on land instead of water?
Sea turtles are reptiles, and are thus descended from other reptiles whose eggs are adapted to being laid on land. The developing turtles will drown if the eggs are submerged. This actually does happen if the turtle mistakenly lays its eggs below the high tide line of the beach. On beaches with turtle protection programs, rangers will sometimes relocate a nest laid too close to the water for this reason, although some people think it's better not to prevent turtles that choose bad nesting sites from being weeded out.
The turtle eggs were dug up when digging a pond, so what should I do with them?
I'm sorry to say that they are probably toast. There's a brief window where the embryo hasn't attached to the membrane inside of the shell, but moving them after that usually kills them. When I used to monitor sea turtle nests we usually wouldn't relocate nests in hazardous places if they were discovered late. What you could try is lifting them straight up from the ground without tilting them, excavating a little bit of the sand/soil around them, and trying to plant them in a new nest of about the same depth. Put the dirt from the old nest around the eggs. Some might hatch, probably in about two months. They will probably not be good to eat since they are fertilized and probably developed a bit if that's what you're considering.
What do you call a group of turtles?
You are talking about the “Collective noun” for animals - and here it is:Animal Groups
How do turtles lay eggs?
There have been some great nature documentaries including footage of some species of turtles laying their eggs. I don't know if all turtles have the same technique, but the images of the leatherback and loggerhead turtles on the beach at night sticks with me. On a certain night with a full moon, all the adult females of a particular population come to the same sandy beach. Without doing research, I remember it as being the place where they were born. They move above high tide line and begin digging in the sand, using one flipper to slowly scrape away a hole, one stroke every two seconds or do. After an hour or more of effort, the damp hole is about half a meter deep. The female then positions her rear over the hole, releases her ovipositor, a sort of mucus-lined tube of skin, and the first egg drops. It's rather damp and soft, so it moves more easily down the tube. Later, it becomes more solid, but not as hard as a chicken egg. One female may lay more than a hundred eggs over a several-hour period until the hole she has dug is about half full. Since the night is nearly over, she scoops the loose sand back into the hole to cover the nest of eggs and crawls back into the ocean. Sometimes small mammals or birds are waiting and take some of the eggs at that point, but the mother can do nothing. Once she has laid her eggs, her job is done. You can find numerous videos on YouTube of these events. Just search for "turtles laying eggs" and 10 or more videos will come up for viewing. They are well worth watching to see how an animal who has been going through this process for about 100 million years has survived without essential change.
What kinds of lights are considered safe for sea turtles?
TBH, no lights are safe during sea turtles’ nesting and hatching seasons.Sea turtles use the light of the moon to steer themselves up onto dark beaches. They need to be a certain distance from the ocean, what we call the “high water mark” or slightly above that mark on the beach so that their eggs will not wash away. They then dig a big hole, drop their eggs in, cover the hole up and head back out to sea.If there is a lot of ambient light in the area, the turtles get confused as to which direction to go to the beach or back out to sea. Incidences of turtles mistakenly heading inland and trying to cross highways, only to be killed by cars, are numerous.I sat on the West Hawaii Fishery Council for a number of years and this issue came up. There was a small bay in a remote location and therefore, there were no lights. The hawksbill turtles use this remote beach for their nesting sites.However, there was a liveaboard dive boat that liked to take their clients there for the remoteness. They did night dives and when no divers were in the water, the lights from the boat lit up the whole area.The Council worked with the dive company, a very large, well-known operation. Since Hawksbills are endangered, the last thing this company wanted was to be seen as insensitive to the ecological needs of these animals. They agreed to stay on top of when the nesting season and hatching seasons (hatchlings also need the light of the moon to find the ocean) were and to not visit the bay during those days and nights.It all worked out fine. Since then another group of volunteers goes down to the bay on those nights and sits in the dark until the little turtles come out of the sand, and they make sure that none of them starts heading in the wrong direction.
What environmental conditions make hatching of Olive Ridley turtles favourable?
After the mating season, the female turtles reach the shores to lay about 100-150 eggs in a clutch during each nesting. They may nest 3-4 times during each season. The female turtles return to the same beach where they were born to lay their eggs, on reaching adulthood.The following conditions favour the Olive Ridley turtle hatching:along the coastal lineslow energy but high period waveslocal wind burst one or two days before or after full moon/half moon daysbeach with a mild slope, medium width and greater percentage of medium sand with low salinityeggs incubating at 28 C produce males and eggs incubating at 31-32 C produce femalesReferences:A documentary on sea turtles and other facts provided during the ‘turtle walk‘ by Tree FoundationOlive ridley sea turtle - Wikipediahttps://www.researchgate.net/pub...