It was a great day for a walk, one I’d done on a number of occasions, invariably with my camera in hand.
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I was near the head at Nobbys – a place where I have photographed some great wildlife shots in the past … gannets from New Zealand, darter with speared cod, seals at play, terns diving … you name it.
But it is not always productive and sometimes you do the walk and find nothing. That was what it looked like the other day time, so when I neared the head on such a lovely day I decided to settle down and watch.
There was nothing for a while and then a darter flew in on the rocks below. Great, I thought, I’ll wait and follow it as it goes fishing. No luck, it didn’t moved for close to an hour.
In the meantime a pied cormorant started fishing and came up with a nice fish. I got that shot, but shortly after came the surprise of the day.
A turtle popped up to have a look at me and get its picture taken. What a beautiful animal this is.
I admit I don’t know to much about turtles, so I did what anyone would do and jumped on my computer to see what I could uncover.
After a lengthy search I’m pretty confident that it was a Green Turtle, one of many species found in Australia.
I’ve included some of the information that I found searching the web on turtles.
Of the seven species of marine turtles in the world, six migrate long distances between their feeding grounds and nesting sites.
They have a large shell called a carapace, four strong, paddle-like flippers and like all reptiles, lungs for breathing air. The characteristic beak-like mouth is used to shear or crush food.
All marine turtle species are experiencing serious threats to their survival.
The main threats are pollution and changes to important turtle habitats, especially coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangrove forests and nesting beaches. Other threats include accidental drowning in fishing gear, over-harvesting of turtles and eggs, and predation of eggs and hatchlings by foxes, feral pigs, dogs and goannas.
There are only a few large nesting populations of the green, hawksbill and loggerhead turtles left in the world.
Australia has some of the largest marine turtle nesting areas in the Indo-Pacific region and has the only nesting populations of the flatback turtle.
