Five of the seven types of sea turtles can be found off the barrier islands of Georgia. They are the green sea turtle, kemp's ridley, leatherback, and the most common turtle in Georgia, the loggerhead. As for the other two, the flatback can be seen around Australia, and the olive ridley lives off the Pacific coast but has recently been spottled off the southeastern Atlantic coast.

Sea turtles are different than other turtles in that they have flippers instead of legs and they use those flippers to swim in the sea. Sea turtles live in the ocean but they have to come up for air. Like alligators and snakes, sea turtles are cold blooded and have scales and a backbone. Even though some reptiles can live in the water, they all must come back to land to lay eggs.
A sea turtles' life cycle begins on a beach, where the female sea turtle comes to lay eggs. The beach she chooses is a special place because that is where she was born. The mother sea turtle always returns to the same general area every two or three years to lay her eggs.

A Mother turtle usually arrives on the beach and finds a spot to lay her eggs. She then digs a hole up to two feet deep to make a nest. The mother lays between 50 and 100 eggs. When she is done she covers up the eggs with sand, packs the sand down with her body, and then goes back to the ocean.

The mother never returns to her eggs and leaves them in the sand to incubate. As the mother turtle crawls along the beach, she may look as if she is crying. Actually, the "tears" are her way of releasing excess salt from the seawater she drinks. This process also happens in water, but it is not as easy to see as it is on the beach.

more