DIVE LOG Australasia

Some turtles can become friendly and unafraid of divers - Fathers Reef PNG

Metabolism is temperature dependent. It speeds up in warmer water and slows in cool water. This includes digestion rate, oxygen consumption, cell growth and more. Turtles in cold water, say 12 degrees, really slow down. FEEDING Loggerhead turtle has a large broad head with powerful jaws and no teeth. They can crush with 500 lbs of force to crush bivalves and cunjevoi. Males have strong and longer keratin nails on front flippers that can ‘hold’ food whilst they chew. They eat a large variety of food from shells, corals, cunjevoi, sponge jellyfish, sea urchins. Some can filter out

solids in the throat such as crushed shells which are spat out. SEXUAL REPRODUCTION Males have a much larger tail. One male turtle I saw at Great Detached reef on a night dive had to be older than me. It had an enormous tail. I knew that he had swum many hundreds of nautical miles to attend the annual turtle love in. His mission was to ensure that future generations of Green turtles is secured. Many thousands of turtles had come here for the world’s largest annual breeding aggregation for Green turtles. Females release a special sexual pheromone to attract males when they are ready to mate. Females lay countless

Above: This massive male Green turtle travelled hundreds of kms for the annual breeding at Raine Island - GBR Right: Adult males have a prominent tail that looks like a fifth leg. Their penis is in the tail to give it extra length to allow transfer of sperm to the female around the shell. Raine Island - GBR 2023

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DIVE LOG Australasia #408 - October ‘24