A long life span

Hi there,

The life span of sea turtles is not known, so hopefully you don’t mind if it sometimes takes longer to add a new post. We have so much time …

Anyhow, Hawaiian Green Sea turtles seemt to grow very slowly in the wild, usually taking between 10 and 50 years to reach sexual maturity – 25 years in average.

Their long period of maturation helps to explain why it takes sea turtles so many years to recover from a substantial population decline. Male and female green sea turtles look virtually alike until they mature. Then, the two sexes are easy to tell apart: the males have long, thick tails, while the females have short, stubby ones. This is an example of sexual dimorphism, or, the ability to differentiate between the sexes of a particular species on the basis of external body characteristics.

More about ‘my girlfriends’ next time!

Good night, Hawaii Honu

Honu nostalgia

Hi there,

Here we are, sitting in cold, grey, snowy Switzerland. All you get about turtles here is the daily look into the fridge. Do they sleep, are they alive, where are my pictures of the Hawaiian turtles? It’s not easy to cope with the non-turtle territory after staying in Hawaii.

Anyhow, trying to get my so wonderful turtle pictures into a nice show to present to everybody here in Switzerland, I stumble over computer problems that will not allow to finish this show. Well, got another idea, another software … and yet again, no chance. What’s wrong with my computer?

Right, this gives me some time to consider more sincere thoughts. Is there anything I can do to help the problem of preserving that species. What can I do to help the Green Sea Turtles to survives for all eternity? The sea turtle mirrors the health of our planet and the struggle for survival for these ancient creatures is in our own hands. Help me fight for it.

Good night, your Honu

Honu of Hawaii – live post number 8

Good bye!

Listen up out there, this is probably the last live post from Honu Paradise. Did you know that the Honu-Girl is leaving us already. It’s a shame, there are so many information we could not tell you yet. You have to come back for sure. All of us will be waiting for you!!!

We are really sad, but live goes on and we have each other to hold on,

or sadly sit at the beach, or bury our head in the sand.

And we will be sitting here in the paradise and wait for the Honu-Girl to come back and take hundreds of more pictures and tell more stories.

You will see, time will fly by and you’re back in paradise.

Mahalo and Aloha from Hawaii

Your Green Sea Turtles

Honu of Hawaii – live post number 7

Hi!

Another day, another adventure, can you believe it? She took off to the ocean again to meet our dear friends the dolphins.

Ha, ha, guess what? Those guys are way too fast for her, just look at the pictures, I’d say not bad, but there’s a lot of room for improvement, so keep trying.

woosh, look the dolphin’s already gone!

Let me tell you something, just concentrate on us turtles. We make your life easy and lay around sleeping, not running or flying off your images. All right, just come back to Kukio!

Your Green Sea Turtle

Honu of Hawaii – live post number 7

Hey!

Yawn! Oh, that was quite a cuddly weekend. We just hang around, let the tourists look at us, let them take some pictures and after all we were just waiting for that girl to come back.

Let’s see what she got for us today …

….wow, wait, wait, wait! Do you believe her, that wild story about the lava flow and the boat trip that she indeed did twice today?

Look, I can make the water go wild too, here you go

ok, you’re absolutely right, let her have her story about the lava and let’s look at it together, no more words must me said, just awesome, I agree

Your Green Sea Turtle

Honu of Hawaii – live post number 6

Good morning!

Boring day today, the ‘Honu’ girl took off. She went to the other side of the island, watch some lava flow into the ocean. Gosh, what’s so interesting about lava, why did she not stick around here.

Right, guess we all gonna have a nap for a while ….

See you around, your Green Sea Turtle

Honu of Hawaii – live post number 5

Hau’oli Makahiki Hou

Well, this time for real, we are in 2010!

Remember, you planned to come along underwater into the warm and tropical waters of Hawaii with me. I promised to show you where our food is. Right then, let’s take off, just follow me.

You’re there? Just don’t forget to breathe. You know, when we are active, we swim to the surface every few minutes in order to breathe as well. Did you really think we could survive without breathing. Nope, not possible. When we, of course, sleep or rest, which usually occurs at night, we adult sea turtle can remain under water for more than 2 hours without breathing. This is due to the fact, that we turtles are capable of containing higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in our blood than most other air-breathing animals, enabling us to use our oxygen very efficiently. Both muscles and blood are able to store oxygen in large quantities, allowing us to remain underwater for such long periods of time. Our juvenile turtles have not developed this ability yet as well as adults and must sleep afloat at the water’s surface.

But hey, who wants to sleep right now,
let’s go, let’s go … Yupee, this is so beautiful, see here are some more corals and tons of limu for us to feed on. Come on, I invite you for dinner tonight …

Enjoy your meal

Your Green Sea Turtle

Honu of Hawaii – live post number 4

Hey!

Welcome to the last post in 2009. Nice of you, that you’re coming in today

Are you ready? What do you mean, you have no idea, what you are ready for? I am taking you out in the warm, tropical waters today, so common you guys, get over here …

You know, that our body is wonderfully adapted to life in the ocean. Our shells are lighter and more streamlined than those of our terrestrial counterparts, and our front and rear limbs have evolved into flippers making us efficient and graceful swimmers, not only capable of swimming long distances in a relatively short period of time, but also hang around the shore, scare ‘Honu’ in just swimming up next to her, or in just getting around for food!

Mhhhh, food, remember we got our name from the color of our body fat, which is green from the algae or limu that we eat. Now that works as follows:

First, we check out the area, where is the food, oh, oh, right there in front of me. Follow me guys …

… you’re there? Oh great, look at all the food, mhh, sup, sip, slurp. Oh, that’s so good. Let’s get some more food, deeper down, common guys, dive, don’t wait, let’s get these algae!

You know, we, the adult green sea turtles are herbivores, meaning that we can only eat plants, and therefore do not pose a threat to any other marine animals. Our youngsters, the juvenile green sea turtles on the other hand are carnivorous. They do feed on jellyfish and other invertebrates. Since some of us adult turtles weigh up to 500 pounds you find us living near coral reefs and rocky (lava) shorelines where limu is plentiful, like here at ‘Honu’s’ favorite beach

Anyhow, wishing you a Hau’oli Makahiki Hou and see you soon in 2010!

Your Green Sea Turtle

Honu of Hawaii – live post number 3

What are you looking at?

What do you mean, you don’t recognize me? Of course, I am not the same turtle you saw yesterday, so what? I can teach you as well, believe me, got some interesting stuff to tell you too.

Just to make sure you believe me, that there are a couple of us out there, here you go, this is one of my friends.

Uff, just took me a while to crawl over there, sorry. So here you go, we are all friends and some of us will talk to you in this blog.

Well you have been promised to get to have a close look into my eye. What’s so special about these eyes, you might wonder. I’ll tell you right after I show you the pictures.

Anyhow, you think we are sad? Nope, what you see as tears in our eyes is certainly not because we are sad or we are crying. The reason for this is simple, we came up with an ingenious way of rid our bodies of the salts we accumulate from the seawater in which we live. Just behind each of our eyes is a salt gland. The salt glands help us to maintain a healthy water balance by shedding large ‘tears’ of excess salt. So our tears just mean that we keep our physiology in check. Got that?

Fine, we’ll be right back tomorrow with another great story.

Have a wonderful evening!

Your Green Sea Turtle

Honu of Hawaii – live post number 2

Ah, there you are again!

How did I know, that you can’t wait to have the chance to look into my eye

Well, sorry, ain’t not going to make it easy for you. My eye’s closed right now. Do you know why? There you go, more to learn about us first.

We are a cold-blooded species, meaning that we get our body heat from the environment rather than making our own. Guess why it is important to come ashore and lay in the sun?

Did you know, that we are reptiles, of course, not the mean species. So, we do breath air and our skin has scales. In addition to our reptilian traits, all species of turtles have evolved a bony outer shell which protects us from predators, as you certainly know we are not the fastest movers in the world.

Our shell covers both our back (dorsal) and our belly (ventral) surfaces and truly, it is considered the most highly developed protective armor of any vertebrate species to have ever lived on this planet. Our dorsal portion is known as the carapace and is covered with large scale-like structures called scutes.  Well, somebody had a good look at those scutes today, when 5 of us came ashore, but guess what. She did not bring her camera, so no pictures of our backs which are truly different from each other. Maybe tomorrow …

Let me just finish of the explanation of our shell. Well, the ventral portion of the shell is called plastron. The carapace and plastron are connected at the sides by hard-shelled plates known as lateral bridges. We do have openings for our head, tail and limbs. While most species of the land turtles and tortoises are able to retract their heads into their shells for added protection, we are not able to do so, and our head remains out all the times. So you will always see us like this:

Anyhow, wish you a good night and hope you’ll be back soon. It’s fun talking to you and tell you all about us!

Your Green Sea Turtle