With streamlined bodies and flipper-like limbs, sea turtles are graceful swimmers able to navigate across the oceans. When they are active, sea turtles must swim to the ocean surface to breathe every few minutes. When they are resting, they can remain underwater for much longer periods of time. Although sea turtles live most of their lives in the ocean, adult females must return to land in order to lay their eggs. Sea turtles often travel long distances from their feeding grounds to their nesting beaches.

Species Information

Green Turtle

Biology: Adult green turtles may reach a size of 1 m long and 180 kg mass. The carapace is smooth and is colored gray, green, brown and black. The plastron is yellowish white. Hatchlings weigh about 25 g, and are about 50 mm long. Hatchlings are black on top and white on the bottom. Age at sexual maturity is estimated at 20-50 years.

Distribution: In the southeastern United States, green turtles are found around the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the continental U.S. from Texas to Massachusetts. Important feeding grounds in Florida include Indian River Lagoon, the Florida Keys, Florida Bay, Homosassa, Crystal River and Cedar Key. The primary nesting sites in U.S. Atlantic waters are along the east coast of Florida, with additional sites in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Green turtles are found throughout the North Pacific, ranging as far north as Eliza Harbor, Admiralty Island, Alaska, and Ucluelet, British Columbia. In the eastern North Pacific, green turtles have been sighted from Baja California to southern Alaska. In the central Pacific, green turtles can be found at most tropical islands. In U.S. Hawaiian waters, green turtles are found around most of the islands in the Hawaiian Archipelago. The primary nesting site is at French Frigate Shoals.

Hawksbill Turtle

Biology: The hawksbill is a small to medium-sized marine turtle having an elongated oval shell with overlapping scutes on the carapace, a relatively small head with a distinctive hawk-like beak, and flippers with two claws. General coloration is brown with numerous splashes of yellow, orange, or reddish-brown on carapace. The plastron is yellowish with black spots on the intergular and postanal scutes.

Juveniles are black or very dark brown with light brown or yellow coloration on the edge of the shell, limbs, and raised ridges of the carapace. As an adult, the hawksbill may reach up to 3 feet in length and weigh up to 300 pounds, although adults more commonly average about 2Ѕ feet in length and weigh between 95 to 165 pounds. It is the only sea turtle with a combination of two pairs of prefrontal scales on the head and four pairs of costal scutes on the carapace. The hawksbill feeds primarily on sponges and is most often associated with the coral reef community.

Distribution: The hawksbill occurs in tropical and subtropical seas of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. The species is widely distributed in the Caribbean Sea and western Atlantic Ocean, with representatives of at least some life history stages regularly occurring in southern Florida and the northern Gulf of Mexico (especially Texas); in the Greater and Lesser Antilles; and along the Central American mainland south to Brazil. Within the United States, hawksbills are most common in Puerto Rico and its associated islands, and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In the continental U.S., the species is recorded from all the gulf states and from along the eastern seaboard as far north as Massachusetts, with the exception of Connecticut, but sightings north of Florida are rare.

Kemp's Ridley Turtle

Biology: The Kemp’s ridley turtle is one of the smallest of the sea turtles, with adults reaching about 2 feet in length and weighing up to 100 pounds. The adult Kemp’s ridley has an oval carapace that is almost as wide as it is long and is usually olive-gray in color. The carapace has five pairs of costal scutes. In each bridge adjoining the plastron to the carapace, there are four inframarginal scutes, each of which is perforated by a pore. The head has two pairs of prefrontal scales. Hatchlings are black on both sides. The Kemp’s ridley has a triangular-shaped head with a somewhat hooked beak with large crushing surfaces. This turtle is a shallow water benthic feeder with a diet consisting primarily of crabs.

Distribution: The major nesting beach for Kemp's ridleys is on the northeastern coast of Mexico. This location is near Rancho Nuevo in southern Tamaulipas. The species occurs mainly in coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico and the northwestern Atlantic Ocean.

Leatherback Turtle

Biology: The leatherback is the largest living turtle, and is so distinctive as to be placed in a separate taxonomic family, Dermochelyidae. The carapace is distinguished by a rubber-like texture, about 4 cm thick, and made primarily of tough, oil-saturated connective tissue. No sharp angle is formed between the carapace and the plastron, resulting in the animal being somewhat barrel-shaped.

The average curved carapace length for adult turtles is 155 cm and weight ranges from 200-700 kg. Hatchlings are dorsally mostly black and are covered with tiny scales; the flippers are margined in white, and rows of white scales appear as stripes along the length of the back. Hatchlings average 61.3 mm long and 45.8 g in weight. In the adult, the skin is black and scaleless. The undersurface is mottled pinkish-white and black. The front flippers are proportionally longer than in any other sea turtle, and may span 270 cm in an adult. In both adults and hatchlings, the upper jaw bears two tooth-like projections at the premaxillary-maxillary sutures. Age at sexual maturity is unknown.

Distribution: The leatherback turtle's range extends from Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, south to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Critical habitat for the leatherback includes the waters adjacent to Sandy Point, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, up to and inclusive of the waters from the hundred fathom curve shoreward to the level of mean high tide with boundaries at 17°42'12" N and 64°50'00" W. Nesting occurs from February - July with sites located from Georgia to the U.S. Virgin Islands. During the summer, leatherbacks tend to be found along the east coast of the U.S. from the Gulf of Maine south to the middle of Florida.

Leatherbacks are commonly seen by fishermen in Hawaiian offshore waters, generally beyond the 100-fathom curve but within sight of land. Sightings often take place off the north coast of Oahu and the Kona coast of Hawaii. North of the Hawaiian Islands, a high seas aggregation of leatherbacks is known to occur at 35°-45°N, 175°-180°W.

Loggerhead Turtle

Biology: The loggerhead is characterized by a large head with blunt jaws. The carapace and flippers are a reddish-brown color; the plastron is yellow. The carapace has five pairs of costal scutes with the first touching the nuchal scute. There are three large inframarginal scutes on each of the bridges between the plastron and carapace. Adults grow to an average weight of about 200 pounds. The species feeds on mollusks, crustaceans, fish, and other marine animals.

Distribution: Loggerheads are circumglobal, inhabiting continental shelves, bays, estuaries, and lagoons in temperate, subtropical, and tropical waters. In the Atlantic, the loggerhead turtle's range extends from Newfoundland to as far south as Argentina. During the summer, nesting occurs in the lower latitudes. The primary Atlantic nesting sites are along the east coast of Florida, with additional sites in Georgia, the Carolinas, and the Gulf Coast of Florida. In the eastern Pacific, loggerheads are reported as far north as Alaska, and as far south as Chile. Occasional sightings are also reported from the coast of Washington, but most records are of juveniles off the coast of California. Southern Japan is the only known breeding area in the North Pacific.

Olive Ridley Turtle

Biology: The olive ridley was named for the olive color of its heart-shaped shell and is one of the smallest of the sea turtles, with adults reaching 2 to 2Ѕ feet in length and weighing 80 to 110 pounds. The species may be identified by the uniquely high and variable numbers of vertebral and costal scutes. Although some individuals have only five pairs of costals, in nearly all cases some division of costal scutes occurs, so that as many as six to nine pairs may be present. In addition, the vertebral scutes also show frequent division, as do the scales on the dorsal surface of the head. The prefrontal scales, however, typically number two pairs. Existing reports suggest that the olive ridley’s diet includes crabs, shrimp, rock lobsters, jellyfish, and tunicates. In some parts of the world, algae has been reported as its principal food.

Distribution: The range of the olive ridley is essentially tropical. In the eastern Pacific nesting takes place from southern Sonora, Mexico, south at least to Colombia. Non-nesting individuals occasionally are found in waters of the southwestern United States. They occur abundantly in Pacific Colombia and Ecuador, but only in small numbers in Peru and Chile.

The olive ridley has been recorded occasionally from Galapagos waters, but it is essentially very rare throughout the islands of the Pacific, and indeed even in the western Pacific it is scarce everywhere, although widespread low-density nesting occurs. In the Indian Ocean it only achieves abundance in eastern India and Sri Lanka, although minor nesting occurs alongside the green turtles at Hawke's Bay, Pakistan, and some nesting also occurs in New Britain, Mozambique, Madagascar, peninsular Malaysia, and various other localities.

In the Atlantic Ocean, the olive ridley occurs widely, but probably not in great abundance, in waters of West Africa, from about Mauritania southward at least to the Congo. In the western Atlantic, nesting formerly occurred abundantly in eastern Surinam, as well as in western French Guiana and northwestern Guyana. Non-nesting individuals occur regularly as far west as Isla Margarita and Trinidad, but they rarely penetrate any further into the Caribbean than this. The species occurs in Brazil, and nests in the states of Bahia and Sergipe, but it seems to be rare.

-NOAA-
-U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-