Leatherback Sea Turtle

News: Allegations of Forest Rights Act violations have been raised regarding the notification of wildlife sanctuaries in Little Nicobar, Menchal, and Meroe islands ahead of the Calcutta High Court hearing on the ₹92,000-crore Great Nicobar project, which is expected to impact ecologically sensitive species such as the leatherback turtle and the Nicobar megapode.

About Leatherback Sea Turtle

• The leatherback sea turtle is the largest turtle in the world.
• They are named for their tough, rubbery skin and have existed in their current form since the age of the dinosaurs.
• Habitat: They can be found primarily in the open ocean.
• Distribution: They occur in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.
  • They are distributed across the globe with nesting sites on tropical sandy beaches and foraging ranges that extend into temperate and subpolar latitudes.
  • Globally, the largest remaining nesting aggregations are found in Trinidad and Tobago, West-Indies (Northwest Atlantic) and Gabon, Africa (Southeast Atlantic).
• Characteristics:
  • Appearance:  They have a primarily black, rubbery skin with pinkish-white colouring on its underside.
    • They are the only species of sea turtle that lack scales.
    • Their shell (carapace) consists of small, interlocking dermal bones beneath the skin that overlie a supportive layer of connective tissue and fat and the deeper skeleton.
    • Their carapace has seven ridges along its length and tapers to a blunt point.
    • Their front flippers are proportionally longer than in other sea turtles, and their back flippers are paddle-shaped.
    • Unlike other sea turtles with crushing beaks for hard prey, they have sharp-edged jaws and pointed cusps adapted for feeding on soft-bodied prey like jellyfish and salps.
    • Their mouth and throat also have backwards-pointing spines that help retain gelatinous prey.
    • Both their rigid carapace and their large flippers make the leatherback uniquely equipped for long-distance foraging migrations.
  • Behaviour: They are highly migratory and also accomplished divers.
    • They spend most of their lives in the ocean, but females leave the water to lay eggs.
  • Diet: They mainly feed on jellyfish. They also consume other soft-bodied marine organisms such as salps, siphonophores, pyrosomas, and squid, along with small crustaceans, fish, sea urchins, snails, seagrasses, and algae.
• Threats
  • Bycatch in fishing gear,
  • Direct harvesting of turtles and eggs
  • Loss and degradation of nesting habitats
  • Vessel strikes, ocean pollution and marine debris
  • Changing environmental conditions, such as rising temperatures, sea-level rise, storms, and shifting food availability.
• Conservation Status 
  • IUCN: Endangered
  • CITES: Appendix I
  • Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: Schedule I