Caretta

The loggerhead sea turtle is a single species worldwide that spends most of its life in the open ocean and shallow waters. It rarely comes ashore, except for brief nesting and egg-laying by females. Hatchlings live in floating clumps of Sargassum. Adults and juveniles live on the continental shelf and in shallow coastal estuaries. In the northwest Atlantic, age is a factor in habitat preference. Juveniles are more commonly found in shallow estuaries and less often in estuaries than non-breeding adults. During the non-breeding season, loggerhead sea turtles prefer waters with surface temperatures of 13.3-28.0°C. Temperatures of 27-28°C are optimal for females.

The loggerhead turtle feeds on fish, shrimp, crab, mollusks and algae. From the feces discharged by the captured loggerhead turtle, it can be seen that most of them are broken shells and opercula of conchs, shells of Izubu clam, undigested limbs of hermit crabs, and gill covers and vertebrae of fish.

Qingdao Marine Products Museum once raised two loggerhead turtles, feeding them with blue-scaled fish, spotted mullet, small yellow croaker, hairtail, mackerel, star flounder, clams, short octopus, long-arm octopus, golden squid, needleless squid, prawns, Japanese sturgeon, arc-edged fiddler crab, Tianjin drift crab, wide-bodied big-eyed crab, etc. They also like to eat freshwater crucian carp and Chinese hairy crab, which shows that loggerhead turtles are not very selective in food. No seaweed such as spiny pine algae, Ulva, Ulva perforata, kelp, and wakame was found to be eaten during the breeding process.

The backs of captured loggerhead turtles are often covered with red and black olive algae, barnacles and oyster shells.

Predatory hunting and killing, as well as the indiscriminate digging of turtle eggs, are important reasons for the sharp decline in turtle resources in the Xisha Islands. It is reported that there used to be many sea turtles on Hainan Island. It was precisely because people caught turtles and dug eggs that no sea turtles were seen on Hainan Island 20 years ago. The beaches on the east coast of Taiwan Province are beautiful, but unfortunately, after human hunting and destruction, almost no sea turtles lay eggs here.

Listed in China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (February 5, 2021) as the first level.

World record for loggerhead turtles: The longest diving time for marine vertebrates: In February 2003, an adult female loggerhead turtle dived in the Mediterranean Sea near the coast of Tunisia for 10 hours and 14 minutes. This data was recorded by researchers led by Dr. Annette Broderick of the University of Exeter (UK). (Guinness World Records)

In China, the loggerhead sea turtle is distributed in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea. It mainly inhabits warm waters, especially along the continental shelf, often appears in coral reefs, and also enters bays, estuaries, saltwater lakes and other places.

The head is broad, the upper jaw is short and wide, the carapace is oblong, the back of the head, carapace and backs of the limbs are nearly brown and brown-red; the sides of the head are light brown-red, and the lower jaw, plastron, limbs and abdomen are light yellow.