General Category | 14-03-08 03:56 GMT | Posted by Ian Chicken

Reptiles:- The Green turtle

The Green Turtle is probably the best known symbol of Ascension Island.

It was Peter Mundy in 1656 who made the first notes on the subject when the ship he was on visited Ascension.
They captured several of them and he made notes of his observations. These notes included the adults, young and the nesting process. Of the Nesting he wrote

"Aboutt the iland are many baies and coves, where the sea-tortoises com on shore to lay their eggs, which they doe by night and scraping a pitt in teh sand, doe lay their eggs in itt, and soe covering them againe, leave them to be hatched and brought forth by the heatt of the sun"

He went on to describe how the young hatch out and find their way to the water

"The yong ones, as soone as they are hatched, run toward the sea by instinctt of nature"

Since a vast amount of research has been completed or is still being collected on the subject of these reptiles.
The Ascension turtle comes from the Brazilian coastal areas feed on algae that is on the seabed, and then at intervals of a few years, migrate to the island, always returning to the same beach to lay their eggs.

The young if they survive the hazardous trip in the first few days spend the first few years of the lives moving around a the south atlantic. At this stage they are carnivores feeding off the likes of jellyfish.
Once they are large enough to fend of any predators they change their life style and become herbivores feeding of the algae.

Little is known of how they do manage to find there way over large distances with such accuracy. Suggestions on how the do it range from the magnetic fields of the earth to smell in the oceans.

Green turtles have a carapace (shell) that can reach 140cm in length.

The carapace has five plates in the middle with four plates on each side.

When they arrive at Ascension island they will mate, which can take a few days to complete. When the female is ready, she will come ashore at night and dig a large pit in the sand. once this has been formed she will then dig out a chamber that is cylindrical in shape and about 60cm deep.
She will then lay her eggs (this is about 120 in total, and can be 3 or 4 clutches in a season) in this chamber filling it to about 50% of its depth. Once completed she will then fill the rest of it in, after which the pit she has dug is also filled in.

The eggs are white in colour, and about the size of a ping pong ball (45mm approximately).
incubation of the eggs takes about 60 days, being warmed by the sun on the damp sand. The temperature is a major factor in what happens to the young as far as sexing is concerned. with cooler sand the young are likely to be male, with warmer producing the females the central point at which an even split of sex is produced is 29ºC.

Due to the to the differing beaches on Ascension the sex can be mostly determined, the lighter coloured beaches are cooler than the darker ones.
Therefore Long Beach will produce Males and the beaches to the north east the females.