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Green Turtle
- Colouration
- Carapace pale olive, richly marbled with yellow; the markings are often in the shape of bands, radiating from the centres of the shields. Plastron yellow. Head plates dull brown or olive, vividly margined with white.
- Dimensions
- A very large individual will have a carapace four feet long and will weigh about 500 pounds. This is much in excess of the thousands of turtles sent to the markets; such range in weight from 50 to 70 pounds; occasional hundred-pound specimens are seen in the rows of helpless animals turned upon their backs.
- Distribution
- Tropical and semi-tropical seas throughout the world; a frequent wanderer into the waters along our Northern coasts.
- Habits
- The practice, in the markets, of turning these animals over on their backs, is a necessary one. As the turtle is adapted to a life in the water, the plastron is soft and unsupported; when placed upon it, the weight of the reptile so presses against the under shell that it is forced against the lungs and other internal organs; the turtle soon dies from an inability to breathe.
Very large examples weigh 500 pounds, but such are rare.
Head proportionately much smaller than that of the Loggerhead Turtle. Carapace with smooth shields-polished on old individuals. Head and limbs plated. Front flippers usually with a single claw.
This attractive animal derives its name from the greenish colour of the fat; the markings somewhat resemble those of the Hawk's-bill Turtle, but that animal is unique in the shingle-like arrangement of the shields of the carapace.
From a lot of turtles that had been shipped north and were lying upon their backs for fully a week, the writer selected a specimen weighing forty-five pounds and placed it in a large tank containing manufactured salt water-enough salt added to fresh water to give it a brackish taste. On the second day in the tank the turtle began feeding, greedily taking large pieces of raw fish; it also ate the commoner kinds of sea-weed. Under these conditions it lived for nearly two years and would have thrived longer had it not been attacked by a small crocodile. The tank was ten feet long and eight feet wide and the animal swam about freely and gracefully; its deliberate motions, slow turns, the occasional stroke of the flippers and slow, gliding progress, were movements strikingly suggestive of the leisurely flight of a hawk or a turkey buzzard. The reptile seldom crawled upon the bottom of the tank, but skimmed over the gravel by a few inches; occasionally it came to the top, when it would expel the air in its lungs with a sharp hiss; the intake of air was more leisurely.
Of the sea turtles, the flesh of this species is most esteemed. The shell is smooth, brightly marked and attractive, but of practically no commercial value.