Art:Blue Devil Sea Turtle
- This article is an entry in the Piratical Guide to Oceanic Life muse game.
Blue Devil Sea Turtle (Cryptodira Cyanea)
This delighfully quick species of turtle is mainly found in the warmer waters surrounding Micronesia and Western Austrlia as well as Samoa and Indonesia and live in groups typically of one male with numerous females and juveniles.
The adult male has a bright blue shell and a yellowish-green underbelly and the adult female lacks the yellowish-green underbelly and has a longer neck.
The blue devil sea turtle has few enemies and as a result can grow up to 30 feet in length from snout to tailtip. Strict vegetarians, they live to be over 150 yrs old typically. As a natural birth control to limit over populating, they only spawn once every 25 years. Although hundreds of eggs may be laid, only a few of these will actually live to adulthood.
Females return to the beach they were born on to lay their eggs. They typically do this when the moon is full and bury their eggs far enough from the high tide line so their nests don't wash out to sea. These eggs will hatch 15 days later and the hatchlings then race for the shore with only the moon guiding their way. Many of these hatchlings will be eaten before they find their way to the ocean by land mammals and other more verocious reptiles.
Once the hatchlings find the ocean, they quickly swim to the nearest Midnight Sea Cucumber bed and begin feasting hungrily growing rapidly.
The most unique aspect of these turtles is the fact that the hatchlings then become "adopted" by a male sea turtle's family that may or may not be related to the hatchling where they remain for the rest of their lives. As a single family, they then swim for hundreds of miles in search for their favorite meal of Tofu Seaweed eating tons of Scuppering Barnacle on the way.
