Unlike their land brethren, sea turtles have flippers instead of feet, cannot retract their heads and spend their entire lives in salt water, except when females come ashore to lay their eggs. Sea turtles are 75-100 cm long and weigh 100-135 kilos. They have blunt jaws which enable them to feed on hard-shelled prey items such as molluscs and seashells. They can live around 100 years and are a migratory species. They reach sexual maturity between the ages of 16 and 28, mate every two or three years in coastal waters and then return to nest on the same beach where they were born. The sex of the hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the sand (nest incubation temperature): warmer temperatures result in a higher percentage of females and colder temperatures in a higher percentage of males. During each reproductive period, the females of Caretta Caretta build 2-3 nests and in each nest they lay up to 120 eggs, which will hatch after 55-60 days. Only 1 in 1.000 puppies survive to adulthood.
Although sea turtles face natural threats such as predators, human activities pose the greatest threat to their survival. Coastal development and the degradation of nesting habitats, accidental capture during fishing operations and marine pollution are in fact among the major risk factors for the conservation of the species.
Sea turtles appear in the myths and legends of many countries of the world and a story about the origin of this fascinating animal could not be missing even in Greek mythology. The myth tells that at the dawn of the world there was a great party on the peaks of Olympus to celebrate the marriage of Zeus and Hera. When the bride and groom entered the banquet room, the father of the gods immediately understood that one of the seats was empty: one of the deities had not presented herself to pay them honour. It was the nymph Chelone, a beautiful but extraordinarily listless creature who, instead of living in the sea with her sisters, lived in a small house on the rocks. As a punishment, the young woman was thrown into the sea with her home and condemned to always carry her beloved house with her, transformed into a slow sea turtle.
Sources: WWF.gr, Oceana.org, Medasset.org, marevivo.it
