A Sea Turtle picture a day #45

Welcome back to A Sea Turtle Picture A Day. Today we are heading north of the border to Vancouver Canada. This picture is of a Leatherback Sea Turtle(Dermochelys coriacea) Which is the rarest of the sea turtles and also the only species that does not have a hard shell. Ttodd Jones is the only researcher in the world that had been able to raise this turtle in captivity for more than 2 years.
In this picture Ttodd is moving this turtle from one tank to another.
In an upcoming issue of National Geographic The May issue. This turtle and more of its species are featured in an article about the Leatherback sea turtle. Unfortunately my picture is not in the magazine.
This picture was taken with a 28-200 mm lens
See you tomorrow

A Sea Turtle picture a day #21

Welcome back to A Sea Turtle Picture A Day. Today we are heading back to Tortolla British Virgin Islands. This picture is of a Leatherback Sea Turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) hatchling that is just crawling out of the nest and seeing daylight for the first time. This is the first time that I ever witnessed a hatchling ever emerging from the nest.If you notice in the picture this hatchling still has its egg beak. That is an added growth on the tip of its nose to help it break thru its shell. The beak then later falls off.
This picture was taken with a 60mm macro lens
See you tomorrow

A Sea Turtle picture a day #7

Welcome back to A Sea Turtle picture a day. Today we find ourselves in a very unlikely place for sea turtles,Much less the rarest of them all. Vancouver Canada. Yes the Fine city of Vancouver in Canada. I only live an hour from Vancouver and when I found out there were Leatherback Sea turtles there I had to go and find out why they were there and most importantly what were they doing there.
The Leatherback Sea turtle(Dermochelys coriacea)Is the largest sea turtle in the world and has never been raised in captivity where the turtle has lived more than a year. The reason is the Leatherback turtle is oceanic pelagic what that means is that it speands it whole live swimming in the open ocean and knows no boundries. Since it knows no boundries earlier attepts to keep on in captivity failed becouse the turtles would swim into the sides of the tanks and injure themselves. That was until a harness system was designed to keep the turtle from being able to touch the bottom or sides as it swam constantly in the tank,
This photo was taken with a 60mm macro lens