Sea Turtle

Title

Sea Turtle

Artist

Darren Fisher

Medium

Photograph - Photography/ Digital Art

Description

A sea turtle that is being rehabilitated in Jupiter Florida. Sea turtles play key roles in two habitat types: oceans and beaches/dunes.

In the oceans, sea turtles, especially green sea turtles, are among the very few creatures (manatees are another) that eat sea grass. Sea grass needs to be constantly cut short to help it grow across the sea floor. Sea turtle grazing helps maintain the health of the sea grass beds. Sea grass beds provide breeding and developmental grounds for numerous marine animals. Without them, many marine species humans harvest would be lost, as would the lower levels of the food chain. The reactions could result in many more marine species eventually becoming endangered or extinct.[73][citation needed]

Sea turtles use beaches and the lower dunes to nest and lay their eggs. Beaches and dunes are a fragile habitat that depend on vegetation to protect against erosion. Eggs, hatched or unhatched, and hatchlings that fail to make it into the ocean are nutrient sources for dune vegetation.[citation needed] Along a 20-mile (32 km) stretch of beach on the east coast of Florida sea turtles lay over 150,000 lb (68,000 kg) of eggs in the sand.[citation needed] Dune vegetation is able to grow and become stronger with the nutrients from sea turtle nests. Stronger vegetation and root systems help to hold the sand in the dunes and help protect the beach from erosion.[73]

Sea turtles also maintain a symbiotic relationship with yellow tang, in which the fish will eat algae growing on the shell of a sea turtle.

Uploaded

May 6th, 2019

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