Specimen Showcase | The Marble Eyes Green Turtle

There are seven species of sea turtles in the world but only 1 species lives and nests in Hong Kong, which is the #Green_Turtle (𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘢 𝘮𝘺𝘥𝘢𝘴 Linnaeus, 1758). From June to October, they can be observed nesting on the sandy beach in Sham Wan, Lamma Island (but do not disturb them or their nests if you see one of them). They can travel thousands of kilometres back to their feeding grounds to mate and nest🤯. Green turtles are thus found all around tropical and subtropical regions of the world, as they use the beaches of nearly 140 countries for nesting.

Green Turtle

The sex of the green turtle is determined before they hatched by the environmental temperature on the beach. If the beach temperature exceeds a certain level, usually around 29°C, more female sea turtles will hatch from the eggs, and vice versa.

Green Turtle specimen with “marble eye”

Do you know why this brown looking species is named Green Turtle? It is because they have greenish body fat. It may be related to their diet because they feed mainly on #seagrass and #seaweed 🤤.

A green sea turtle is grazing seagrass

One special thing of this specimen in the pictures is the "#marble_eye"🤩. This does not represent a new subspecies of Green Turtle, but instead an incident during the specimen preparation, decades ago. Eyes are hard to be preserved on dead vertebrate specimens. In taxidermy, #taxidermists usually replace the real eye with fake eyes. If the fake eyes are out of stock or there are no suitable fake eyes in terms of size, the taxidermist will replace them with marbles. If you are interested in the "marble eye" specimens, you are welcome to visit our museum and discover more interesting stories about our specimens😉.

Green Turtle specimen with “marble eyes”

#seaturtle #turtles #marine #dive #biodiversity #specimensshowcase #specimens #HKBM