The Bermuda Museum, Aquarium and Zoo’s Biodiversity Action Plan Coordinator and Bermuda Turtle Project Coordinator Jennifer Gray provides the following facts about sea turtles:

* Sea turtles are born survivors. They have been on earth for 125 million years, and pre-date dinosaurs.

* Injured turtles, and ones with breathing difficulties, stop diving and feeding on sea grasses. Instead they float on the surface to conserve energy as they heal.

* Turtles can hear boats approaching and get out of the way of those travelling within the five-knot, no wake speed limit. They cannot complete with speeding boats.

* There are “turtle alert” signs around Bermuda to warn boaters to travel cautiously.

* Green turtles are not from Bermuda. They come here from Costa Rica, Ascension Islands, the Caribbean, Florida and Brazil and live here for several decades as juveniles and teenagers. When they become adults they leave our waters to live with other adults elsewhere.

* Turtles are so programmed to do what nature intends them to do that they do not adapt to changes in today’s world. Because they are so “hard-wired” and live for so long, they are more vulnerable to extinction.

* Bermuda’s biggest threats to turtles are speeding boats, entanglement in fishing gear, especially gear left lying on the rocks, and the ingestion of plastic. Sewage run-offs into the sea, dredging for marinas, docks and shipping channels, and beachfront development all threaten the vital seagrass beds, which are the sea turtle’s feeding grounds. Turtles are the “lawnmowers” of the sea.

* The Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo is installing special receptacles around the Island to hold discarded fishing line. Please use them.

* Do not throw plastic bags, six-pack ties, plastic bottles, and rope into the sea. They are all lethal to turtles, who mistake them for food and ingest them.

* It is illegal to capture or hold turtles, or any piece of turtle, dead or alive.