Tuesday, March 06, 2012

[jules' pics] Turtley awesome

They do not often come up for air...
turtle

But sometimes the waves try to beach them...
turtle

turtle

I'd no idea that turtles just turtle about in the shallows a short distance from residential neighbourhoods. Some of them were really big. At this beach it really was turtles all the way down.
turtle beach


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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 3/06/2012 05:36:00 PM

6 comments:

Hank Roberts said...

So do they lay eggs there? I wondered if you see turtle-safe lighting there. This site mentions Australia and New Zealand:

http://www.axiomled.com/AxiomLED/Sea_Turtles.html

(We use them for nighttime lighting:
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.118-a22 )

James Annan said...

Dunno. The beach was quite small and low-key, but our host happened to know it was a reliable viewing area.

Hank Roberts said...

Here's some:

"Sea turtles inhabit near the coast of Japan are loggerhead, green, hawksbill, olive ridley and leatherback. Mostly loggerhead sea turtles land on the beaches of Japan to lay their eggs. The northernmost landing site is Fukushima prefecture for the pacific side and Ishikawa is for the side of Japan Sea. Green sea turtles mostly swim around the islands of Ogasawara and Yakushima is the northernmost landing site. Hawksbill sea turtles also lay eggs at the beaches of Okinawa. The other turtles do not land on but they are found around the coast of Japan."
http://www.animal-dino.com/sea_turtle_association_of_japan.html

Hank Roberts said...

PS, don't you have a macro?

http://www.animal-dino.com/act/turtle_association03.jpg

James Annan said...

I think you aren't really supposed to get too close to them - and they seemed to want to keep their distance as we walked up and down the beach. I wouldn't want to get too close to those teeth anyway!

I have heard of one or two appearing locally, but this doesn't seem common. However we are not really beach-side people...

andrewt said...

My turtle id skills aren't the best - but think these are Green Turtles. They don't nest much on the (main) Hawaiian Islands, mainly on small remote island further out in the chain.

Interestingly the Hawaiian population lost lost one of their main nesting islands a few years ago when it was submerged - presumably global cooling.