10 most asked sea turtle questions—answered by a wildlife expert

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• Learn more about sea turtles
• How plastic pollution is harming sea turtles
• How DNA is helping protect sea turtles
• How sustainable fishing saves sea turtles

Transcript

Callie: Hi everyone. I'm Callie from World Wildlife Fund, and today we're going to be answering your top questions surfacing about sea turtles. Welcome back to Wildlife Café. Grab a coffee or tea and let's shell-ebrate these amazing animals.

1. How are sea turtles different from other turtles?  This is kind of a trick question because turtles, sea turtles, and tortoises are all considered turtles, but there are some key differences to look out for. Tortoises are slow-moving herbivores with stumpy legs and live exclusively on land.  Turtles are semi-aquatic animals that live on land and in fresh water. They are usually omnivorous and have webbed feet.  And sea turtles have some key characteristics that set them apart.  Because they are ocean-going reptiles, they are built for life in the sea.  First off, no feet. Instead, they've got long, powerful flippers to propel them through the water. Walking on land is not their strength.  Ever seen a sea turtle waddle? Adorable? Yes. Graceful? Mm, not so much.  Next, the shell situation. Most turtles have big, domed shells they can tuck all the way into, but sea turtles have sleek, streamlined shells made for swimming. Last, size matters. Sea turtles are way bigger than most other turtles, with some weighing two times more than a grand piano.
2. How many species of sea turtles are there?  There are seven species of sea turtle: leatherback, green, loggerhead, hawksbill, Kemp's ridley, olive ridley, and flatback.
3. What are the biggest and the smallest sea turtles? The leatherback sea turtle is the largest turtle in the world, weighing up to two thousand pounds and with a shell length of up to eight feet.  On the other hand, Kemp's ridley is the smallest, weighing a mere seventy to a hundred pounds as an adult and reaching only up to two feet long.
4. Where do sea turtles live?  Sea turtles are found in all oceans except the cold polar regions and spend most of their lives in their feeding grounds.  Actually, six of the seven species are found  in US waters, all except the flatback, which is native to Australia and Papua New Guinea.
5. What do sea turtles eat?  Well, it really depends on the species. Sea turtles have no teeth, but mouths made of keratin, which is the same stuff as your fingernails, and each species has a different shape to match its diet. Take the hawkbill, for example, who has a more pointed beak-like mouth that it uses to get into crevices in coral reefs to feed on sponges or to rasp off algae. Green sea turtles, on the other hand, are omnivores when they're young, meaning they eat a mix of plants and animals. But they actually switch to a mostly plant-based diet of sea grasses as adults.  Kemp's ridley and flatback turtles are also omnivorous, eating things like jellyfish, mollusks, snails, crabs, but they'll also eat algae and seaweed too.  Loggerheads and Olive ridley are mostly carnivorous and eat crabs and other marine animals.  And lastly, leatherbacks eat mostly jellyfish.
6. What wild animals eat sea turtles?  So, sea turtles are protected by their beautifully unique shells, called a carapace, which is typically made of fifty to sixty bones fused together, including their spine and ribcage.  Quick caveat though: leatherbacks do not have a hard, bony shell like other sea turtles. Instead, they have a flexible leathery carapace, which is what gives them their name.  Even with all this armor, sea turtles still help feed other species. Sharks, crocodiles, orcas, and other top predators will eat juvenile and adult turtles, and a lot of animals eat young sea turtles as they make their way to the ocean.
7. How long do sea turtles live?  Sea turtles live and grow in the open ocean, which makes it really difficult to study them. Scientists think that they can live really long lives, anywhere between 50 to 100 years, and they don't even reach sexual maturity until they're around 20 to 30 years old. Evolutionarily, sea turtles are some of the oldest creatures on Earth. They've existed for over 100 million years, outliving the dinosaurs.
8. How long can sea turtles stay underwater? Sea turtles must come up for air, but they can hold their breath for an impressively long time. If they're sleeping or resting underwater, they don't need to come up for air for several hours.  Some clocked at holding their breath for up to seven hours. To avoid drifting, sea turtles will wedge themselves under corals or rocks.  Something else interesting: remember the leatherback's unique shell? Made of tough oil-slicked skin with underlying bony plates arranged in ridges. This unique structure allows them to withstand the pressure of deep dives, nearly four thousand feet, making them the deepest diving of all sea turtles.  Pretty cool, right?
9. How far do sea turtles travel?  Sea turtles are serious globetrotters. Leatherbacks can swim over ten thousand miles a year just going between where they eat and where they nest.  So how do they not get lost?  All sea turtles can actually sense the earth's magnetic field, kind of like having a built-in GPS. It's called magnetoreception, and it helps them find their way across thousands of miles, return to the same beach where they were born, a behavior called natal homing, and even figure out their position using Earth's magnetic signals, almost like a compass.  And somehow it gets even crazier. Some species, like loggerheads, don't just have a built-in compass. They can actually learn magnetic maps of the places they've been. So as they travel across the ocean, they're basically building a memory of where they are and how to get around.  We're talking journeys from Japan all the way to Mexico, or from the U.S. East Coast to West Africa.  Scientists are still discovering how this works, but growing research is showing they remember these maps for months and use separate systems to figure out where they are and which way to go.  This new discovery explains more about how sea turtles navigate thousands of miles in the ocean and why protecting magnetic landscapes matters.
10. Why are sea turtles important?  Sea turtles help maintain healthy coral reefs and seagrass beds. They help keep balance within marine food webs, and as ocean travelers, transport nutrients between ocean zones and from ocean to beach ecosystems.  Their pure existence and presence is a sign of ocean health.  They are also mini ecosystems in and of themselves. A single sea turtle's shell can host dozens of species, from barnacles to fish to algae to tiny crustaceans, turning them into floating habitats. Lastly, they are important to many cultures around the globe,  practically making them shell-elebrities.

Okay, bonus round, rapid fire. Four fun facts to impress your friends.

1. Sea turtles are temperature dependent. Yep, the sand basically decides their sex. Hot sand, more females. Cooler sand, more males.
2. Sea turtles can actually drink seawater! They've got these specialized salt glands behind their eyes that get rid of all the extra salt. It kind of looks like they're crying, but nope, just really cool biology.
3. They're just like us. Well, kind of. Sea turtle flippers actually have the same basic bone structure as human arms,  like upper arm, forearm, even finger bones. But their fingers are way longer, which basically turns their arms into powerful flippers for swimming.
4. Sea turtles are super mysterious.  There's actually a whole part of a sea turtle's life called the lost years, when baby sea turtles disappear into the ocean for about 10 years before we ever see them again.  What's more, while females go back to the beaches where they were born to lay eggs, male sea turtles never return to shore. Instead, they head back to their feeding grounds, but the route they take is still a mystery that scientists are trying to figure out.  Sea turtles are still full of mysteries, and that's part of what makes them so incredible.

Are sea turtles endangered?  Yes. Five of the seven species are globally threatened with extinction, ranging from vulnerable to critically endangered, primarily due to habitat loss, bycatch in fishing gear, climate change, and the illegal turtle trade.  The only ones that are not rated as globally threatened with extinction are the green sea turtle, which was relisted in 2025 as least concern, and the flatback, but that's because we don't have enough data on them to know for sure.

Why are sea turtles having such a hard time? First, illegal take and trade. Over the last thirty years, at least 1.1 million sea turtles, excluding shell products and eggs, have been illegally exploited across 65 countries, of which 22% were likely to have been traded internationally.  Next, habitat loss. Coastal development and human activity destroys nesting beaches and can displace turtles from their feeding grounds. Light pollution on beaches can confuse hatchlings, making it hard for them to find their way to the ocean,  and busy ports, dredging, and other in-water development can be hazardous as well.  Bycatch is another huge problem. The unintended capture of sea turtles in fishing gear can result in drowning or cause injuries that lead to death or debilitation. For example, swallowing hooks or flipper entanglement.  It's a worldwide problem that we think is terribly underestimated, and endangered loggerheads, green turtles, and leatherbacks are especially vulnerable. Lastly, climate change.  Remember how turtles are temperature dependent? Warmer sands can skew sex ratios to developing more females than males. A changing climate also affects the location and availability of their food sources, and rising sea levels and more frequent storms can also erode nesting beaches.

So what is WWF doing? WWF tracks turtles to better understand where they go from their feeding and breeding grounds to the routes they travel across the ocean.  One of the biggest ways we're doing this is through something called ShellBank. It's the world's first traceability toolkit and global DNA database for sea turtles.  So what does that actually mean? ShellBank lets us identify different turtle populations based on their genetics, understand how those populations are connected, and track where turtles or even turtle products come from.  We do this by analyzing DNA from turtles nesting on beaches,  as well as turtles caught as bycatch, illegally poached or seized, including meat, eggs, and products.  All of this data helps conservationists and law enforcement figure out which populations are most at risk,  and importantly, which targeted actions can best protect them. For example,  ShellBank can support investigations into illegal turtle trade or help fishery managers understand which sea turtle populations are being hit hardest by bycatch.  And it's already making a huge impact. With over 20 thousand samples from more than 50 countries in the database, Shellbank is truly a game changer for sea turtle conservation.

So how can you help protect sea turtles?  It's actually way easier than you might think.  You can support conservation groups working to protect nesting beaches and coastal habitats.  If you're near the ocean,  turn off beachfront lights at night. Those tiny hatchlings can get super confused. When you're on the beach, give nesting sites their space and never disturb them. Cutting back on plastic is also a huge thing you could do. Turtles often mistake it for food. You can also choose sustainable seafood and avoid buying anything made from turtle shells or turtle products.  Every small action adds up and it really does make a difference.

If you care about ocean wildlife, make sure to like, follow, and share this video.  Now go out and dazzle your friends with some turtley awesome sea turtle facts. We'll see you again for our next Conservation Coffee Chat on Wildlife Café . Have a favorite sea turtle fact we didn't mention today? Let us know in the comments.