What have you done to save a turtle today?

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We all hear about all the things that are wrong in this world. We see all these terrible things happening around us, but do we actually lift a finger to try and help save this world? Don't worry, I am just as guilty as you are.....  

We have all these beautiful wonderful amazing animal creatures all around us, but what if one day in the future, there is nothing left except pictures to show our kids.  Wouldn't that be sad?

We are all so busy in our daily lives that we just have no more time left for others, and it seems like animals are very low on the radar. 

We look but we don't see....


One of my favorite animals in the world is the sea-turtle. I just absolutely love them to bits, but did you know that nearly all the species of sea turtles are classified as endangered species? Animals that are supposed to be free in their own environment is in danger because of all the water-pollution caused by humans. Despite the laws against trading, illegal trading has become a serious problem as these turtles are killed for their meat, eggs and shells.   

          

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Did you know?


A baby sea turtle never actually meets its mother. The female sea turtle always lays eggs on the same beach where she hatched herself.  She digs a hole of about 15 cm deep with her front  paws and then digs deeper to about 40 cm with her back-flippers. 

She lays her eggs and closes up the eggs with sand. The eggs hatch between 55 and 60 days. 

The newly hatched turtles break the eggs with a small temporary egg-tooth in their mouths, and work together with the rest of the turtles to dig out of the nest. 

       

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This can take anything from 4 to 8 days.  Once these little turtles are free, they very clumsily crawl to the ocean during nighttime where they will remain for life.  Male turtles are very difficult to trace, because they in fact never return to shore.  Another interesting fact is that these first years of a sea-turtles life is called the lost years by marine biologists.   

“We don’t know where the turtles go, how they get there, how they interact with their environment,” says Kate Mansfield, a marine biologist at the University of Central Florida. For loggerheads, the lost years phase lasts from 7 to 12 years. That's a huge chunk of life history about which sea turtle conservationists haven't a clue.

 Sea turtles can stay under water for up to five hours. A sea turtle can slow down it's heart rate to conserve oxygen. Up to 9 minutes can elapse between heartbeats. Sea turtles migrate hundreds of kilometers for nesting and for feeding.  Some turtles can travel up to 1500 km for nesting. Only one in ten thousand sea-turtles make it into adulthood. Saddest thing is that they literally fight their way into the ocean and now mostly because of humans, they have to struggle inside the ocean too.

Sea turtles eat jellyfish, and often confuse plastic bags that found a way into the water, with jellyfish. Once they eat the plastic bag they smother to death. The other day something frightening happened right in front of my eyes. The wind suddenly came up, and literally whooshed everything out of the rubbish bin into the ocean. People were running around trying to pick up the rubbish, but some of the plastic bags landed in the ocean and they were swept away with the waves. This made me sad, and there was literally nothing I could do.  

Below is a video about a sea turtle that swallowed a plastic straw. Who knows how a straw landed in the ocean, but it happened, and this is the result. 

This can be a very disturbing video to watch but it might change your  view on pollution.  

Courtesy of YouTube 

In another incident a sea turtle in Thailand had to undergo an operation to remove 915 coins from its stomach after swallowing 

A sea turtle in Thailand had to undergo an operation to  remove 915  coins from its stomach, after it swallowed the loose change visitors tossed into its enclosure for good luck.

I hope these people had more luck because it was not so lucky for the poor turtle. 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/06/surgeons-remove-915-coins-swallowed-by-thai-sea-turtle.html 

   

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If you would like to learn more about these beautiful creatures, please go the reference guide supplied below:  

http://www.savetheseaturtle.org/

http://www.defenders.org/sea-turtles/basic-facts 

http://www.seeturtles.org/sea-turtle-facts/ 

http://www.livescience.com/55507-sea-turtles.html http://www.seaturtle-world.com/  

                   

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What do you do to contribute to saving these animals? 


We live in a sad world where nothing is just normal anymore. Everything becomes acceptable and that is a very frightening thought. You CAN make a difference to the life of one of these animals.  If you can't, start somewhere else, but it is not too late to start today.  

Let us all start to make this world a better place to live in so that there is something left for our children.  

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