Turtle Trek

Deer World,

 For our first assignment we were supposed to pick an environmental issue that effected us personally and do a environmental awareness project on it that we could later turn into an art piece. I chose to do my environmental awareness project on Sea Turtles. Why did i choose this topic, well up until recently i was the proud owner of a Red Eared Slider named Donatello, and for some reason i absolutely love Sea Turtles, I'm going to blame that on Finding Nemo. *smiles* Lets get back on topic, dude!

Did you that a Sea Turtle can live to be about eighty years old?

Or that one Sea Turtle usually lays around one hundred eggs at a time, and on average only one of the eggs from a will surive till adulthood? That's some scary math, imagine if that was your children what would you want done?

How about the fact that there are seven species of Sea Turtles and that they are all either endangered or critically endangered? How about that three out of the seven are critically endangered? Did you know that? Are you getting the picture yet?

Main Threats:
Habitat Loss                  Hunting & Poaching                    Trade
Accidental Capture         Climate Change                          Pollution
Disease                       Natural Predators                         Boating

There is somewhere around a 100 million tons of plastic in the world and that ten percent ends up where? Yup you guessed it in the ocean! Did you know that turtles have downward facing spines in their throats which makes regurgitation impossible. Meaning when they swallow that trash bag that got left on the beach because they mistook it for a jelly fish whats going to happen to then? Firstly, it keeps them from being able to swallow other food, or they could get whats called bubble butt and float to the surface due to trapped gas that was caused by the harmfrul decomposition of the bag. The gas will cause the turtle to float to the surface, so one of two things can happen they could either starve or get picked off by predators.

What can you do to help? Glad you asked let me give you some sites that may be helpful.

http://tybeemarinescience.org/sea-turtle-project
http://tybeemarinescience.org/turtle-trot
http://www.georgiaseaturtlecenter.org/

This was the inspirtation for my art project.
He is situated outside Tybee's very own Marine Center.
Don't forget to drop by and check him out next time your in the area.
Later Dude!