Green Turtle Habitat and Facts: Discover Everything About Them

The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans are their oceans. Although we are not going to lie to you, specimens of green turtles have been found south of Alaska.

The green turtle habitat is conditioned by the life of these animals. As good reptiles, they spawn their eggs on land, on the same beach where they were born. This does not imply that they remain there. In fact, their feeding grounds maybe thousands of kilometers away, but they return to the same beach to nest every 2 to 5 years. Throughout its life, a green turtle’s habitat changes 3 times. The first is where they nest, the seconds where they grow up as hatchlings and the third green turtle habitat is where they feed and rest.

As soon as they hatch and manage to survive from the nest to the water, the hatchlings swim out to the open sea and spend 3 to 5 years following the ocean currents. During this time, they are omnivorous and feed on sponges, invertebrates, or crustaceans.

Then, they move back to shallow nearshore areas where they feed and spend their lives. Greenie and her adult conspecifics feed on “salad”. Yes, yes, yes, yes, this is the only herbivorous sea turtle and so it eats seagrasses and algae.

Their shell does have is an oval shape, four pairs of shields on each side and 5 in the middle that will help you recognize them. You will also distinguish a green turtle from another sea turtle by its rounded head, rounded nose and two large scales located between the eyes.

Green turtles are quite large. They measure 71cm to 1.5 m 3- 4 feet in length and can reach a weight of 68-190 kg, 300 to 350 pounds, although the largest recorded specimen weighed 395 kg 871 pounds.

Threats to Green Turtle Habitat

One of the main threats to green turtle habitat is fishing gear (nets, hooks, longlines, pots, etc.) and plastic and petroleum-based debris (balloons, plastic bags, floating tar or oil).

As happened to Greenie, green turtles get caught in fishing lines and nets. These gears cause injury, weakening and, in many cases, death by drowning.  Other times, they may eat plastics, mistaking them for food. Inside the body, the plastic does not degrade and prevents the turtle from extracting the necessary nutrients from the diet, weakening them until they die.

Climate change also poses a threat to the habitat of green turtles. Rising sea levels are causing the loss of beaches where our friends used to nest. If they do make it, storms and flooding can wash away nests. Levees make it difficult for turtles to reach their nesting destination, and the grasses they love become degrade or change in abundance and distribution. Higher temperatures further warm the sand. It can change the percentage of male and female hatchlings, also the migratory seasons.

Other threats to green turtle habitat include:

– egg harvesting, which is still legal in some countries;

– collisions with boats;

– fibromatosis disease. Some experts link this disease to the green turtle’s habitat degradation.