Sea Turtle Saragussm Mat

Sargassum provides a safe place for sea turtle yearlings to float on during their early days of life.

Sea turtle saragussm mat.

At sea sargassum provides vital shelter for a variety of species. During the first three to five years of life sea turtles spend most of their time in the pelagic zone floating in seaweed mats. Most turtles steered clear of the continental shelf but there was a lot of variation in their routes. The algae clumps can be a few inches to a couple of miles long and also provides other sea life with a source of food.

But when the algae comes. Birds of all kinds search the sargassum for these species to eat. Sargassum is a genus of brown class phaeophyceae macroalgae in the order fucales numerous species are distributed throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world where they generally inhabit shallow water and coral reefs and the genus is widely known for its planktonic free floating species. Many species call sargassum home including sea turtle hatchlings fish shrimp crabs and more.

The same currents that corral the sargassum help steer the hatchling sea turtles into the sargasso sea which is about 4 1 million square kilometers a vast nursery where they find ample food and protection from predators. These mats come from the sargasso sea in the north atlantic ocean which is surrounded by four ocean currents. Sea turtles are generally found in the waters over continental shelves. Turtles use sargassum mats as nurseries.

A number of turtles left the north atlantic subtropical gyre and entered the sargasso sea a. Sargassum hildebrandtii grunow herbarium type specimen somalia before 1889. Five species of sea turtles that pass through the atlantic have been recorded there and for at least three of these species the loggerhead caretta caretta green turtle chelonia mydas and hawksbill eretmochelys imbricata the sargasso sea is vitally important. In the sargasso sea alexandra gulick and nerine constant collected data on water temperature in sargassum mats.

Most blend in with the sargassum their bodies camouflaging. The sargasso sea is a vast patch of ocean named for a genus of free floating seaweed called sargassum while there are many different types of algae found floating in the ocean all around world the sargasso sea is unique in that it harbors species of sargassum that are holopelagi this means that the algae not only freely floats around the ocean but it reproduces vegetatively on the high seas. Young turtle hatchlings even hitch rides on these floating mats as they venture into the open ocean.