Endangered Sea Turtles

Climate change has endangered many animals throughout the last few years. One of these is the Green Sea Turtle.

To start, here’s some background knowledge about the turtles:
• Green sea turtles are not named for the color of their shells that are brownish green, but instead for the color of their cartilage and fat.
• Green sea turtles migrate between feeding grounds and from the beaches from where they hatched.
• The turtles can live for 60 to 80 years in the wild.
• You can tell how old they are by counting the amount of growth rings in the cross section of the humerus bone almost like counting the growth rings of a tree.

The green sea turtle has a very hard lifetime; only about 1 in 1,000 sea turtles make it to adulthood because of natural causes and natural predators. Climate change has made a big impact on Green Sea turtles. They are also harmed by bycatch in commercial and recreational fishing gear, vessel strikes, and loss of nesting habitat from coastal development, so they have been endangered for longer than climate change has harmed them.