Why is the green sea turtle skin green
Meet the Green Sea Turtle!
hey everyone N and I are on vacation we
are on the lovely island of Grand Cayman
which is home to the world-famous Cayman
turtle Center the green sea turtle is a
large tropical species of turtle that
grows to around 3 feet in diameter on
average although some individuals have
been recorded up to 5 feet in diameter
due to their large size adults can weigh
upwards of 300 pounds although some of
those five footers have been recorded to
weigh over 600 pounds
these guys are massive and you can only
imagine how much food they go through
they are also a very long-lived species
of turtle those that survive into
adulthood can live upwards of 80 years
or more this is one of the green sea
turtles that became in turtle center and
these days grow incredibly fast believe
it or not it's only a year old unfold so
they grow very quickly to become out of
predator
I guess prey for most predators and once
they get to around the size it's not
nearly as many animals will eat them
their shells are just gorgeous though
look at their shell it's so smooth and
these are strong animals too I was not
expecting it to be so dense it's
probably a good 15 20 pounds
behind me is the breeding pond here at
the caiman turtle center this is where
all of the adults are kept and ordered
for breeding purposes the green sea
turtle will breed at around 16 to 25
years old and after that the breeding of
the reproduction rate really starts to
go down drastically but it takes them
upwards of 16 years in order to become
fully mature in breeding age the
breeding season for these magnificent
Turtles is from June through September
during which time they will lay three to
seven clutches of eggs each clutch
containing between 100 and 120
golf-ball-sized eggs what the females do
is at night they will crawl on to shore
and dig into their preferred nesting
site they'll kind of choose what area
they think will work best sometimes they
choose better than others and they will
dig down about 3 feet using their back
flippers and that's where they will
deposit their eggs and kind of use their
back flippers to kick the sand over them
and cover them up and this entire
process often takes all night before
they are finally empty and able to go
back into the water here at the center
the morning after those eggs are laid
since they're monitored so closely here
the staff will dig up and carefully
remove those deposited eggs and put them
into their indoor incubator you see in
the wild the since they're buried 3 feet
underground the babies the first ones to
come out will dig to the surface and
they push more sand onto the nests
behind them as they emerge which
sometimes trap some of those babies and
then they die before they can even come
out of the sand between that and all the
predators they face as babies and having
to find food in the wild only about 1%
of baby's green sea turtles make it to
full adulthood
whereas here at the facility they can
take care of them in a controlled
environment and not only do they
increase their survival rate to about 80
to 95 percent but they can also control
which ones are males and which ones are
females based on the temperature they're
incubated at with sea turtles or green
sea turtles if the eggs are incubated
above 82 degrees they end up being
females if they're incubated below 82
degrees they end up being males here at
the facility they want about 50 50 s so
they incubate them all at about 82
degrees
the center is so successful at hatching
and raising green sea turtles they have
actually released over 35,000
individuals back into the wild since
they opened once the eggs are laid they
are immediately collected and then
brought into incubation at this hatchery
so I think we should go inside and see
what babies are in there and maybe we'll
even get to see some eggs too
who knows well we are inside of the
hatchery unfortunately we just missed
the tail end of green sea turtle
breeding season so there are no eggs or
babies at this time of year however
there's a mock up and you can kind of
see this is actually the hatching room
so this is an heated room that they
store all of the eggs in until they
hatch hatching is really interesting
since the eggs are laid upwards of 30
inches below the sand it can take
upwards of a week for the babies to
crawl all the way out during that time
their umbilical cord dries up and closes
off so inside of this room they're
buried under only about 3 to 4 inches of
sand so the babies come out really
quickly compared to what they would in a
wild and as a result they sometimes
still have a little bit of that
umbilical cord still remaining even
after they're out of the sand once the
babies are out they are closely
monitored until they are ready for the
water and then they're moved to baby
tanks inside and it takes a couple of
months before they are brought outside
into that door facilities what we did
find inside of the hatchery though was
an adult sea turtle shell there's no way
I'd be able to hold an actual sea turtle
if it was an adult so I'm just gonna
have to do with the show but just like
all turtles they're back vertebrae are
fused to their rib bones which are
modified ribs that can actually create
the shell itself so really needs to see
that it's tough to hit solids here feel
that this is heavy just the shell alone
right wait a minute we I know it's
surprised me too when I first picked it
up once the green turtles reach about
two months old they're moved from the
indoor facility into these outdoor
holding pools to grow up a little bit
more in here we have a little two month
old green sea turtle now these guys are
very active and surprisingly scratching
under their chin actually calms them
down the green sea turtle is a herbivore
so they eat primarily plant matter in
the form of algae in the wild
but believe it or not different species
of sea turtles have different native
diets these are the herbivores and
there's others that are more carnivorous
like the longer head sea turtles but
this little guy I'll put him back and I
think there's one a little bit bigger
over here Wow look at the red coloration
of this one that one is just gorgeous
this one's a little bit closer to about
five or six months old I would imagine
and the green sea turtles have these
little thumbs on their front flippers
they have a spur up here and on the back
they also have a spur on their flippers
back here now the sea turtles unlike our
North American species of turtles that
actually have webbed feet and
distinctive toes and that helps them
come out onto land to bask in the Sun
sea turtles have evolved in our built
for a life purely in the water they stay
in the water their entire life after
they emerge from the eggs unless they
are laying their eggs that's really the
only time they come out onto the sand
and to lay those eggs and then they
return right back to the water
we found one more look at this adorable
little guy he just must have just
recently been moved out to this outdoor
enclosure tuffet or one there this
scoots don't overlap on their shelf so
they are incredibly smooth on their
carapace which is the upper portion of
their shelf the lower portion is called
the plastron everything is covered in
scoots which are these individual scales
that are all over their shelf sexy sea
turtles is very similar to sexing other
species of turtles and tortoises
basically males have longer tails than
females if you look at this one's tail
it's very long which indicates that it
is a male and if you look at the one
over here it has a very short tail so
this is a female males also have more
pronounced spurs on their front flippers
all right guys do you see what this is
look what we found this is a bite mark
something took a little chomp out of
this Ranger out of this leaf here and I
suspect it's probably a certain lizard
that's taking over Grand Cayman right
now they're very invasive the green
iguana if you look there's more bite
marks they see that you're they're very
prolific so they breed a lot and since
there's so many individuals on the
island they are eating like all of their
plants and eating the food sources of
the native caiman iguana which is now
endangered because of that but where is
not only does the caiman turtle Center
have green sea turtles which is what
they specialize in but they also have a
small greeting group of Kemp's ridley
sea turtles this is a smaller species of
sea turtle only reaching about two to
two-and-a-half feet in diameter of their
size so these are adults males they are
the most endangered sea turtle in the
entire world but the caiman turtle
Center was the first facility to
successfully breed them in captivity and
they were so successful that back in
1999 they sent a hundred and ten captive
bred babies back into the wild in Mexico
where they are native to this is one of
the carnivorous species of sea turtle
they come Friendly's have a very strong
jaw that allows them to crunch the
shells of crabs and clams mussels snails
other invertebrates and mussels and they
particularly love actually a Saki bodied
animal to squid that's what they're
being fed right now along with sardines
they're fed three times a day here at
the facility but it looks like they
really like the squid to the point where
they go around and eat all of that first
and then they clean up the sardine
afterwards so this breeding facility is
doing a lot of great conservation work
this is Bendel once you saw that we were
filming he flagged us down to show us
some of the highlights around the park
unfortunately because of the background
noises it was hard to hear the audio so
I'm gonna try my best to interpret what
he's teaching us here we've just been
told that we're gonna be shown the
biggest turtle that is at this facility
so are they still are good guys 1:41
awesome I feel bad taking out of the
water
well after being introduced to these
amazing endangered animals we also got
the opportunity to swim with the green
sea turtles as you can see my hair is
still wet we just came from that but
they're free swimming in this entire
lagoon area and we were able to check
them out and see them up close and
personal so we're going to end today's
video with some of the clips we managed
to take more of Ed's clips than mine
because my phone liked it I guess when
it's underwater freaks out so we'll be
using mostly Ed's clips for those but I
hope you enjoy it and thank you for
joining us today and watching today's
video if you are ever in Grand Cayman we
highly recommend you check out the
caiman turtle Center it is amazing and
it is worth the trip it's just we're
spending all day here thanks again and
we'll see you next week
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another lizard that lives here natively
on Grand Cayman is the curly tailed
lizard you can see how he gets its name
we have a male adult male here he's kind
of head bobbing a little bit and if you
look close you'll see how his tail has a
different textured look to the rest of
his body that indicates that his tail
has regrown so it doesn't look like what
it originally did I'm trying to see how
close I can get to this guy unlike green
iguanas these are insect eaters so
they're actually good to have on the
island they'll eat spiders they eat any
small insect that they can catch of it
basically and they're very very quick so
there's no chance I'm gonna be able to
catch him but I've got to try
he's like putting me back
you wanted to be picked up right now you
have some angry sandpipers - chasing
each other around this so salty
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