This picture above is a Green Sea Turtle that is surfacing to get some air, yet sea turtles are almost always submerged in water. Putting that into consideration, that means that the sea turtle have developed an anaerobic system of energy metabolism. All an anaerobic system is, is a form of respiration using electron acceptors other then oxygen. When surfacing to breath, a sea turtle can quickly refill its lungs with a single explosive exhalation and rapid inhalation. Sea turtles have large lungs which a good thing because, with the large lungs the lungs have adapted to permit rapid exchange of oxygen and to avoid trapping gases during deep dives.
As horrible as it is to say, humans have a big impact as to why the Green Sea Turtle is on the endangered species list. Human action presents both intentional and unintentional threats to the species' survival. Intentional threats include continued hunting and egg harvesting. More dangerous are unintentional threats, including boat strikes, fishermen's nets that lack turtle excluder devices, population and habitat destruction.
The Green Sea Turtle has just as much of a right to be on this plant as us people do. Except their habitat is much different then ours. We live in house and I'm sure you all know that turtles live in the ocean. A Green Sea Turtles moves across three different habitat types depending on their life stage. The turtles lay their eggs on a beach. Mature turtles are mostly in shallow, coastal waters with lush green bedding. Adults on the other hand, are usually in inshore bays, lagoons, and shoals with lush sea grass beading. Turtles usually spend most of their first five years in convergence zones in the open oceans. Young Sea Turtles are rarely seen because they swim in the deep, pelagic waters. They usually swim at 1.6-1.9mph. Pretty slow but hey were talking about turtles aren't we!?
