Marine+Turtle

=**Marine Turtle** = =** ﻿ ** =

Marine turtle covers six different endangered species that have existed on Earth for 150 million years. They can be found in tropic and subtropic waters, in the Atlantic as well as in the Pacific Ocean and the Meditteranian.

**Size and looks**
The biggest marine turtle is the green see turtle, measuring up to 150cm and their weight ranges from 35kg up to 200 kilos. The smallest of them is Kemp's ridley, being only 70cm long and weighting 5-40 kilos.

==**Biology ** ==

All of the marine turtles have addapted to life in the ocean and can spend long periods of time underwater. They spend most of their time in water, but must lay their eggs on land.

**Conservation**
Main threats to the marine turtles are fishing, pollution of the waters, climate change and their eggs being stolen. Hundreds of thousands of marine turtles get killed when they get tangled in fishing nets. Marine turtles mistake rubbish, such as plastic, to jellyfish and suffer a slow and painful death when eating them. Also the pollution of the water causes a threat to the turtles. People collect turtle eggs mainly for food. They are believed to enhance the eaters' powers. Turtles are used for cooking. Their shells are ripped off and boiled, the turtle itself is thrown in to the ocean to suffer and die. Organizations such as WWF have protections programs for saving the turtles. They have volunteer workers helping the haching baby turtles to get safely into the ocean. The organizations also try to limitate the fishing areas, so that the turtles habitants would be net-free. By: Linda and Eira