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Published: 2023-09-22 16:33:14 +0000 UTC; Views: 1435; Favourites: 91; Downloads: 0
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Description
Green Turtle is a sea turtle found throughout tropical and subtropical waters of the world."Green" turtle gets that name for the color of its fat, not shell. Being the only herbivorous sea turtle, they gain that fat color from the vegetation in their diet. Actually, only adult green turtles are herbivorous; juveniles consume a lot of animal-based food. Females return to the beach where they were born to lay their own eggs. It's not completely understood how can sea turtles remember their birthplace, but the reason for doing so in the first place might be simply to guarantee that a beach has suitable conditions for successful nesting.
Threats:
- Habitat destruction
Beach-front development reduces and disturbs areas suitable for nesting. It can scare females off from nesting completely or prevent hatchlings from reaching the sea safely. There is also some evidence to suggest that global rise of temperatures affects sex ratios of hatchlings, since males of this species need lower temperatures to develop. Foraging habitat of green turtles also suffers from human development and pollution.
- Poaching and trapping
Green turtles are subject to poaching on all stages of their lives. People collect juveniles and eggs, adults are hunted for their meat and shells. Even when not being hunted intentionally, many turtles get caught on fishing hooks and in nets by accident.
- Disease
Turtle fibropapillomatosis is a potentially fatal virus that causes tumors on the skin, eyes and internal organs. It's most common for green turtles, but can affect other sea turtles as well. It's believed that ocean pollution increases the spread of this disease.
Green Turtle is currently listed as Endangered with estimated 85,000 nesting females in the wild (not the same as overall population).
And for the final day the theme was Ocean/Free choice.
I went with ocean and, uhh, free choice. Actually, I wanted to do tuna, but couldn't come up with a way to make it visually interesting, as it would be mostly a lot of blue. Green turtles, on the other hand, have lots of colors.
So, this is it for this year. There was no lesser-known species featured, really. Mostly because I didn't feel like I had enough time to dive into differences between 5 different bird species that all look the same. I had a couple of interesting animals on my mind, but they didn't really work with what I wanted to draw for the themes. Well, hopefully I'll have more time next year.
Time: 4h30m
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Comments: 2
yearflower [2023-09-22 21:31:40 +0000 UTC]
👍: 2 ⏩: 1
migrubbs In reply to yearflower [2023-12-05 01:17:39 +0000 UTC]
👍: 1 ⏩: 0