Although green sea turtles live most of their lives in the ocean, adult females must return to land in order to lay their eggs. Biologists believe that nesting female turtles return to the same beach where they were born. Often sea turtles must travel long distances- sometimes more than 1000 kms- from their feeding grounds to reach this beach. Just how sea turtles find these beaches is not known. Males accompany the females during the migration.
Green sea turtles nest only at night. The female must pull herself out of the water and all the way to the dry sand of the upper beach using only her front flippers- a very difficult task indeed. She then carves out a bottle-shaped burrow. She lays her clutch, which consists of approximately 100 leathery-skinned eggs, in the burrow and covers them carefully with sand. She may lay more than 1000 eggs in one summer, making the species the one that lays the maximum number of eggs.
