year as a result of plastic pollution. This includes whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions. Human activities can generate a lot of noise within the oceans from sources such as seismic surveys, oil exploration, sonar, and mass cargo shipping. Many forms of marine life depend on their sense of hearing for survival; for example […]
the temperatures of the sand where incubation occurs. Colour is also thought to factor into plastic consumption, although preference varies between species. Young turtles prefer white plastic, while Schuyler and her colleagues found that seabirds called shearwaters opt for red plastic. One explanation is that animals simply mistake plastic for familiar food items – plastic […]
control of prey populations. With this in mind, I was thrilled to learn that you can actually go snorkelling with seals. Diving with Seals happens on the Atlantic side of Cape Town at Duiker Island in the Karbonkelberg marine protected area . The cooler waters of the Atlantic, shallow kelp forests and comparatively low number […]
Baby sea turtles incubate for 60–80 days and hatch. 8) Newly hatched baby sea turtles emerge from nests and travel from the shore to the water. 9) Baby sea turtles mature in the ocean until they are ready to begin the cycle again. A lineage of unrelated marine testudines, the pleurodire (side-necked) bothremydids, also survived […]
ces of food from the water. Because they only eat small fish, krill, and other things that can fit through their baleen plates, baleen whales don’t need teeth! Baleen whales have two blowholes. Not all sharks are large. Some only grow up to 7 inches long. However, most kinds of sharks grow to about 5-7 […]
killed SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau and two other people, died in a concrete prison 33 years after he was taken away from his Icelandic family. Lolita, torn away from her family when she was just a baby, has spent half a century in the same tank at the Miami Seaquarium. Some countries continue to capture […]
their system and start attacking the insides of the turtle. Another danger to sea turtles comes from marine debris, especially plastics which may be mistaken for jellyfish, and abandoned fishing nets in which they can become entangled. The two marine biologists accidentally made the observation in the Solomon Islands on a hawksbill sea turtle, one […]
rubbish comes in such a range of shapes, sizes and colours that it appeals to a similarly diverse array of animals, and this is the problem. Schuyler recalls someone asking, “why don’t we make all the plastics blue?”, seeing as experiments suggest this colour is less popular among turtles. But other studies have shown that […]
Omnivorous turtles may eat a wide variety of plant and animal life including decapods, seagrasses, seaweed, sponges, mollusks, cnidarians, Echinoderms, worms and fish. However, some species specialize on certain prey. Sea turtles maintain an internal environment that is hypotonic to the ocean. To maintain hypotonicity they must excrete excess salt ions. Like other marine reptiles, […]
As a result, they wander or drift with the currents. Plankton are defined by their ecological niche, not by any phylogenetic or taxonomic classification. They are a crucial source of food for many marine animals, from forage fish to whales. Plankton can be divided into a plant-like component and an animal component. Except for some […]