Welcome to Fort Matanzas National Monument My name's Ranger Ellen I work with the National
Park Service. Today we are going to talk about turtles. Well these eggs have been in their
egg chamber for about two months now and its been a few days of hatching underneath the
surface and the baby sea turtles are excited with anticipation of digging to the surface
they've waited until all their brothers and sisters have hatched and they start digging
toward the surface when they get to the surface its pitch black night out and the first baby
sea turtle to come up to the surface looks out toward the horizon and they see the moon
has made a pathway on the ocean's surface for them to follow they start clamoring toward
the ocean all of their energy and excitement for this moment of making it to their new
home the open ocean the first baby sea turtle enters the water and the waves his brothers
and sisters clamoring behind him and they make their way out past the waves to the deeper
water away from their predators under the cover of night their goal is to survive not
just for a year or two but up to 15 to 20 years until they come back to these same shores
to nest again to make the new generation of sea turtles during this 15 to 20 years they
are focused on growing they eat all kinds of things they love to eat the small little
fish, they love to eat the crabs they even eat some of the sea weed that grows on the
surface of the ocean and they munch away growing, growing, growing, now during this time there
are lots of dangers for them as well those natural predators that we were talking about
like the sharks and things of that nature but also human predators these babies have
to navigate fishing nets and fishing traps as well so these babies they have a long journey
ahead of them with lots of dangers ahead lets hope they survive