A rare but happy sight

THE UK has an interesting relationship with turtles, starting with the language that we use about them.

Unlike the rest of the world, where anything with a shell is just a turtle, we have specific words for each kind.

If it lives in the ocean and has fins, it’s a turtle. If it lives in freshwater and has long claws, it’s a terrapin. And if it lives on land, it’s a tortoise.

No species of tortoise or terrapin is native to the UK, but there is a species of marine turtle that is considered part of our native fauna, albeit a rare one.

This is the leatherback, which are the biggest and most widely distributed turtles in the world.

They can measure more than 8ft and weigh 500kg-plus.

And as the name suggests, unlike other turtles that have obvious shells, these marine mammoths have a layer of leathery dark skin all over and no obvious shell.

They are a very rare sight off Wales or Cornwall in the summer but are seen far more than any other species of turtle.

Leatherback turtles subsist entirely on an unexpected diet – jellyfish. They float around eating these tricky treats, using their strong beaks and spiked throats to stop anything that gets in their mouth escaping.

Unfortunately, floating plastic bags and balloons look a lot like jellyfish to a turtle and once they eat them they can’t spit them out.

So why can the leatherback follow jellyfish into waters that other turtles dare not go?

Well that has to do with their unique physiology. Unlike every other turtle, they can generate their own body heat and use it to stay warm in waters that other turtles could just not survive in.

With warmer waters due to climate change, we are seeing more turtles in our waters.

The increased number of strong storms is also having an effect, with more than a dozen turtles washed up in the UK last year alone. That is a staggering number when you consider that only a few hundred have been washed up in the last century.

Hopefully we’ll see more of them not stranded.