I was wondering if anyone could tell me what species these turtles are? I'm thinking Green Sea / Hawksbill, but not 100% on it...

They were photographed off the coast of Mexico (Cozumel / Tulum region) in summer '06, and were up to 3' or so carapace length. Apologies for the "blueing" of the photos - it was with my old underwater camera (a regular camera with a plastic box... )

Any help with IDs will be appreciated!









Cheers,

Andy

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Pretty sure that's a Green Turtle.

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That is a beautiful set of pictures.

Cheers Graham - do you know what the difference is between the two? I tried Googling for images of each, but couldn't really make out many differences...

gtm - thanks, I took around 50 or so of various turtles that we came across. Some I was SCUBA diving, some snorkelling, and a few I got just by swimming from the beach to the edge of the shelf with a pair of goggles and fins on!

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My sister & sister - in - law saw a green turtle whilst snorkeling on the reef in Mauritius in November. I missed out as I was otherwise engaged at the bar.

I'm definate that it's a Green Sea turtle, got this off Wikipedia(sorry it's so big) for comparison.

The most obvious difference is the shape of the beak, a Hawksbill, as the name suggests has a beak shaped like that of a hawk, longer and narrower and more hooked than that of the Green.

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I believe thay also have a distinctive 'jagged carapace' as well.

I thought for sure I was going to be able to show up Graham on this one... I actually knew better with an aquatic... so I checked before posting... Green sea turtle for sure.

Because the animal is so clean my first response was Hawksbill. Green sea turtles are typically covered with algae and do get huge.

The beak is the give away. Check out the species on Arkive. ARKive - A unique collection of thousands of videos, images and fact-files illustrating the world's species. This is the best resource for photos... check out Aldabras... totally amazing...Egyptians too...

Ed

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Ed @ not allowed to post a link
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

Cheers guys - Green Sea they are then!

I've dug out a few more photos - again apologies for the lack of colour of some of them; it's a combination of depth and a camera that's only really designed for surface use...


A couple of cleaner fish, which may explain why they were so clean; a lot of the turtles had these following / attached to them:




A couple of feeding shots - a lot of the turtles weren't bothered by me being there, and were only too happy to frolic on the bottom pulling out sea-floor plants:






A trio of shots taken in the shallows of one going from feeding to surfacing to take a breath. They made movement seem so effortless, especially compared to terrestrial chelonia:








Thanks again for the ID!

Andy


Edit: I've just had a quick look on the site you posted Ed, there's some amazing shots on there!

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