The Life Cycle of a Sea Turtle
I am learning to write an explanation.
By Emelia
What is a sea turtle? A sea turtle is a reptile and they have been around roughly for
150 million years. There are seven known species of sea turtles and six of those species are
endangered. There are three stages of the life cycle of a sea turtle. The egg stage, the baby
sea turtle stage and adulthood stage. The first stage is the egg stage.
Eggs:
The female sea turtle goes on to high sand and finds a good place to dig a hole to lay her
eggs in. She covers the eggs with sand. The female sea turtle lays roughly 110 to 200 eggs.
The eggs are white and leathery and about the size of a ping pong ball. It takes just a bit more
than two months to hatch. Roughly 20% do not hatch.
Baby sea turtles:
Baby sea turtles are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. When the baby sea turtles
are heading off to the sea there are crabs and birds trying to eat the baby sea turtles.
Baby sea turtles eat seagrass, seaweed, crabs (baby crabs), jellyfish and shrimp.
About 50% do not survive on the way to the sea. After they have survived past their
predators on land they find a little patch of seaweed and settle there for the first few days.
Then they find a new group of predators awaiting them in the sea.
Then comes along the adulthood stage.
Adulthood:
Even though they are growing up they still have predators. The predators are big fish,
dolphins and sharks. They also have to avoid big waves and currents. In ten years they
grow from a dinner plate to a dinner table. Some of the main predators are the bigger
sharks and the occasional killer whale. A sea turtle lives roughly for 80 years. The adults
continue the life cycle of what other sea turtles did before them. Then the cycle repeats
and repeats.
Sea turtles are endangered because of all the plastic that goes into the water. Plastic is
bad for them because of the chemicals and oils in it. So try and keep lots of plastic
out of the ocean.
