Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 2.26 Structural design of green turtle skull [photo-
graphs taken by Ms. Ankita Mitra (environmentalist) on
10 November 2013 with the kind permission of Dr. Lubna
Hamoud Al-Kharusi, Director General of Fisheries
Research under Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
Wealth, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman]
Sea turtles have specialized feeding habits, for
example, green turtle is herbivore and the
hawksbill subsists largely on sponges. Repro-
ductive behaviour patterns are similar among the
species, but some interesting variations are
known. Sea turtles are famous for their remarkable
feats of navigation. They return at two, three, four-
year intervals to lay eggs on the beaches at which
they are hatched. Homing behaviour can be a great
advantage to any animal. If the parent survived its
earliest childhood at this location, it will probably
be a suitable place for hatching the next genera-
tion. The navigation of green sea turtles to tiny
Ascension Island, an emergent point of the Mid-
Atlantic Ridge between Brazil and Africa, has
been extensively studied. Researchers have found
that the turtles use solar angle (to derive latitude),
wave direction, smell and visual cues
account of the
ve species of marine turtles,
widely distributed in and around Indian coastal
waters, is highlighted in Table 2.15 .
Marine Lizard
The marine iguana (
),
the only marine lizard, is native to the Galapagos
Islands. These large lizards are descendents of
green, vegetarian iguanas that still inhabit the
tropical forests of the mainland. It is believed that
in the distant past, chunks of riverbank from
Central America may have broken loose and car-
ried into the sea along with different other
Amblyrhynchus subcristatus
ora
and fauna into the Galapagos islands, which might
be the probable cause of this animal to have settled
here. The iguanas travelled and wandered in the
islands in search of food and vegetation that they
used to feed in the forest. But though the Gala-
pagos Island was dramatically different from the
forests, it had adequate resources for its survival.
The conditions of the island thus favoured the
species to survive and propagate. The unusual
lifestyle of the marine iguana was due to its
adaptability in precarious condition, when it had
fl
nd
the island, then to discover the spot on the beach
where they hatched perhaps 20 years before. The
migration of Olive Ridley (
rst to
)
to the mangrove-dominated beaches of Odisha (in
the east coast of India) for laying eggs is also an
interesting event, which has become a subject of
interest
Lepidochelys olivacea
for many researchers. A comparative
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