Sea Turtle

Duration: 936 ft.

Year Published: 1970

Creator: Xerox Films.

Complete Record: The life cycle of sea turtles forms a living bond between the ocean and the land. Except when they hatch and when they lay eggs, sea turtles live in the sea. Nevertheless, they must have air and can stay underwater only about an hour at a time. Turtles first appeared on earth some 200 million years ago, before the advent of dinosaurs. A brood of newly hatched sea turtles, no bigger than silver dollars, crawls to the sea from a nest of sand on the beach. Once in the water, the little reptiles must learn to swim and to find food. A baby turtle does not know what is good to eat, and its bumbling search for food is amusing. It has no luck attacking a sea hare, a shell-less snail, a jellyfish, a sea urchin, a star fish, or a cluster of oyster shells. It even tackles an octopus, which fortunately for the turtle, isn't hungry. A five-foot-long female turtle laden with eggs makes her way to the beach, where she scoops out a nest in the sand with her hind flippers. Throughout the night she lays 100 or more leathery-shelled eggs somewhat smaller than hen's eggs. Exhausted, she manages to cover her eggs with sand and, just before dawn, crawls back to her ocean home. In about 60 days the young turtles hatch, and the life cycle continues.