Jet Skier’s Kind Gesture Toward Tiny Sea Turtle Is Touching Hearts
Wild animals sometimes need help from humans even if they can't ask for it. Daily Mail Animals shared a video of a tiny sea turtle swimming along when a jet skier noticed it was covered in barnacles and decided to help. The video was shared on Wednesday, March 20th, and his kind efforts will make your day.
The jet skier stopped when he saw the turtle swimming at the surface of the water. Watch as he gently plucks off several barnacles and even a surprise hitchhiker who was on it's shell. The before and after results are amazing!
We need more people like this guy! Daily Mail commenters appreciated the kind gesture that the sea turtle was given, too. @CourtneyThomas_23 shared, "Little dude probably feels so much better. Thank you for being so kind!" @Alexander Gilbey pointed out, "Got a whole ecosystem on the shell LOL!" And I couldn't help but laugh at @Mila who said, "Not the crab cruisin' on his back!"
Fun Facts About Baby Sea Turtles
Baby sea turtles are born with odds against them. Do you know that it's estimated that only 1 in 1,000 of these guys (actually called hatchlings) incubate under the sand for 60- 80 days before they hatch. Mothers lay anywhere from 50 to 200 eggs. According to Wildlife Informer, it can take the turtles up to a week to dig themselves out of the sand that covers the nest! Once they finally reach the surface, the tiny turtles venture from the nest down towards the shoreline and into the ocean.
Wildlife Informer shared this interesting fact about the size of sea turtles, "They start out being a mere two inches long. It takes between 7 and 30 years for them to fully grow and mature depending on the species. Leatherback babies are only around 2-3 inches in length at birth but can grow to over 2,000 pounds as adults." Their size is incredible!
Baby sea turtles eat a wide variety of things including seaweed, jellyfish, crustaceans, and fish eggs. Other than what they eat, it's unclear to scientists how baby sea turtles spend the first few years of their lives, and they refer to those years as 'the lost years'. They hypothesize "that they spend their time riding ocean currents and tucking themselves into floating seaweed to find food."
Once they reach the size of a dinner plate, the growing turtles will return to coastal areas where they will forage and continue to mature. When they are old enough to reproduce, they return to the same beach that they were born on to mate. In short, sea turtles are pretty fascinating creatures!
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