Leather back sea turtle is endangered!:(

The leatherback sea turtle is the largest of all living sea turtles and the fourth largest modern reptile behind three crocodiles. It can easily be told apart from other modern sea turtles by its lack of a bony shell. Instead, its shell is covered by skin and slimy flesh. 

An adult leatherback sea turtle in the wild.

Leatherbacks have been viewed as unique among reptiles for their ability to maintain high body temperatures using metabolically generated heat. All studies on leatherback metabolic rates found leatherbacks had resting metabolisms around three times higher than expected for a reptile that big.  

We found  out that the leatherback turtle is a species with a global range. Of all the different sea turtle species, the leatherback sea turtle has the widest distribution, reaching as far north as Alaska and Norway and as far south as the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and the southernmost tip of New Zealand. The leatherback is found in all tropical and subtropical oceans, and its range extends well into the Arctic Circle.

There are three major, genetically distinct populations. The Atlantic leather back sea turtle population is separate from the ones in the eastern and western Pacific, which are also distinct from each other. A third possible Pacific subpopulation has been proposed, those that nest in Malaysia.

Leatherback turtles can be found primarily in the open ocean. Scientists tracked a leatherback turtle that swam from Indonesia to the U.S. in an epic 20,000 km foraging journey over a period of 647 days. Leatherbacks follow their jellyfish prey throughout the day; accordingly, these sea turtles "prefer" deeper water in the daytime, and shallower water at night (when the jellyfish rise up the water column). This hunting strategy often places turtles in very frigid water. Its favoured breeding beaches are mainland sites facing deep water and they seem to avoid those sites protected by coral reefs.

This bar graph shows the decrease in leatherback

sea turtle populations from 1990-2006.

Pacific leatherbacks migrate about 9,700 km across the Pacific from their nesting sites in Indonesia to eat California jellyfish. One reason they are endangered  is because plastic bags are floating in the ocean. 

Pacific leatherback sea turtles mistake these plastic bags for jellyfish; an estimated one third of adult leatherbacks have ingested plastic. These turtles have the highest risk of encountering and ingesting plastic bags offshore of San Francisco Bay, the Columbia River mouth, and Puget Sound, although most garbage in the ocean(s) can be found in the great pacific garbage gyre, as shown in picture below.

Map of the worlds garbage 

Gyres.

If you would like more information, or would like to become involved in the rescue of these endangered animals, please visit : http://shorelinecleanup.ca/ .Plz leave your comments and questions in the comment section below.