Sea Turtle Life Cycle

Sea Turtle Life Cycle

This page explains a typical sea turtle life cycle. Click on the links to the left for species specific information.
You can help the sea turtles – find out how here…Coastal water feeding area
Sea turtles become sexually mature between 11 and 40 years old. Much of their juvenile and adult lives are spent in coastal feeding areas.
Breeding migration
Adult males andfemales migrate towards the area where they hatched once sexually mature. This migration can be thousands of kilometres.

Mating
Mating mainly occurs offshore from nesting beaches and females matewith a number of different males. Females store the sperm and use it to fertilise several clutches of eggs that they will lay in the course of the nesting season.

Males return to their feeding areasonce the females begin to nest.
Nesting beach
Females usually nest at night to avoid the sun’s heat. They crawl out of the water and seek a suitable location to dig a nest in the sand and lay theireggs. This process is repeated every few weeks. Depending on the species a female may lay as many as 7 clutches of eggs each nesting season.
Females dig a body pit with their fore flippers thenexcavate an egg chamber with their rear flippers. They may repeat this process several times until they are satisfied that the nesting conditions are correct, at which point they will lay a clutch ofeggs. Between 50 and 130 eggs are laid, depending on the species.
Females then fill in the nest with sand and return to the water where they begin the fertilisation process again with sperm that theyhave previously stored.
Females return to feeding area
Females return to their foraging grounds once the nesting season is over. They may not breed again for several years though this is dependant onthe availability of food.
Hatching
Eggs hatch after 7-12 weeks depending upon the species and environmental conditions. Sand temperature determines the sex of the turtle: cooler sands produce more...