Natural History: Juvenile Caretta caretta

Every summer, my family spends a week at Edisto Beach, South Carolina. At night, some family friends and I go out looking for ghost crabs. This past summer, while out one night, we stumbled across a nest of baby loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) emerging from their nest. We knew not to interfere with them, but it was a cloudy night and street lights were misguiding the turtles away from the water. To help them, we used flashlights to guide the turtles toward the ocean. After about an hour, all of the turtles safely reached the water's edge to begin their long journey.
As a hatchling, loggerheads are approximately two inches in length and weigh on average 0.05 pounds. They appear to be a brown to dark gray color. As they mature, they grow to be about 3 feet long and 250 pounds. Their coloration changes to become a reddish-brown on the carapace and a light yellow on the plastron. The habitat of the loggerhead varies from terrestrial to oceanic to neritic (near-shore coastal area). Mature adults mate from late March to early June and the females will nest 3-5 times per season. The eggs take around 2 months to incubate and therefore hatching periods occur from late June to mid-November. After hatching and returning to the water, juveniles swim until they reach an area that is dense with floating vegetation, such as seaweed, where they are "float and wait" foragers on small floating particles. As they mature, their diet will shift to consist primarily of whelks and conchs. Their distribution in the Atlantic extends from as far north as Newfoundland and as far south as Argentina. However, they primarily nest in the subtropics, which includes all of South Carolina's coast. Overall, loggerheads are circumglobal.
This encounter is one that I vividly remember and love sharing with others. Loggerheads are such beautiful turtles, and as we learned in class are very impressive with how they can navigate. It makes me wonder where all these guys (or girls) are right now!

References

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/turtles/loggerhead.html