![]() Sea grasses make up the majority of its diet. The green seaturtle is the only member of the family that is known to prefer eating plants. Their diets are made up of a variety of marine, or sea, animals, including fishes snails and other mollusks (MAH-lusks), or animals with a soft, unsegmented body covered by a shell barnacles and other crustaceans (krus-TAY-shuns), or animals with a soft, segmented body covered by a shell and certain sponges and sea urchins. Most seaturtles are primarily meat eaters. They are more common close to shore than far out to sea, and they feed and nest at sites along the coastlines on continental shelves, or shallow plains forming the borders of continents. These turtles live in saltwater from the tropics to areas with mild climates well north and south of the equator, the imaginary circle around Earth that is midway between the poles. Seaturtles inhabit all the oceans of the world and the Mediterranean Sea. The leatherbacks have a carapace that measures 6 to 7 feet (1.8–2.1 meters) in length. The largest members of the family, the leatherback seaturtles, tip the scales at half a ton (454 kilograms) or more. Unlike many other turtles, they cannot retract, or pull back, their limbs or heads into their shells. Seaturtles are excellent swimmers, gliding through the water with sweeps of their large, broad, and powerful front limbs, which look like flippers or paddles. The lower shell, or plastron (PLAS-trun), is a bit smaller than in most turtles and attaches to the upper shell by tough but flexible tissues called ligaments (LIH-guh-ments), rather than the bony bridge common to land turtles. Their upper shell, or carapace (KARE-a-pays), is quite flat rather than highly rounded. ![]() The seaturtles are large animals that live in the ocean. LOGGERHEAD TURTLE ( Caretta caretta): SPECIES ACCOUNTS If you aren't going to be adding color or sealer, go ahead and skip straight to step 9 now.SEATURTLES: Cheloniidae GREEN SEATURTLE ( Chelonia mydas): SPECIES ACCOUNTS The clay is still a little flexible while its hot so this is a good time to make sure the shell still fits. Don't push the shell on too hard, it should fit on nice and snug but you should still be able to remove it without squishing the turtle again.įinally, remove the shell and bake your turtle according to your clay's directions.Īs soon as your turtle is out of the oven and cool enough to touch without burning you, pop the shell back on. if it just slides on nicely its ready to cook if not do a little more reshaping. Once your turtle is how you want him again, try fitting the shell on. Try not to smooth out any of the imprints left by the shell. Lay the turtle down flat on the foil and reshape it to how you want it again. Some times this is very easy and sometimes its not, either way the turtle should only be slightly misshapen when your done. Keep pealing and working your way around very slowly and gently until the clay is free from the shell. Start by very carefully pealing the turtle away from one of the edges of the shell. Put a small piece of foil on a cookie sheet and preheat your oven to what ever temperature your clay says to set it to.īefore you do anything else, admire your beautiful turtle for a minute because if its going to be destroyed its going to happen in this next step.īefore the turtle can be baked you have to remove the shell. Leave them all a little thicker than you want them because they will be flattened out as you attach and add texture to them. Once everything is about the right size, reshape the head, tail, and legs. Here I usually role the legs back into balls so I can compare sizes and make sure both the front and both the back legs are the same size. Do the same with the head and tail.Īdd a tiny bit more clay to the head, tail, and all the legs because some is going to be lost in attaching them to the body. ![]() Since I'm making a sea turtle, the front legs are slightly larger than the rear legs. Play around with the legs until you get them to about the size you want them. The clay ball for the body should be big enough to be squished down and cover the whole bottom of the bead in about a 1/4 inch thickness of clay. Mostly you just have to guesstimate how big they should be and its easy enough to add and remove some later. ![]() The size of these balls are going to depend on type of turtle and the size and shape of the bead. ![]() Next your are going to roll out seven balls of clay. ![]()
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