This month our gallery theme is “Turtles”! Ben and I are fortunate to have had many turtle encounters over the years. They are magical moments. When I was 13, I went snorkeling for the first time and saw a turtle. That was a powerful experience that got me obsessed with the marine world and eventually scuba diving. 

Sometimes sea turtles can be difficult to identify. Limited underwater visibility can sometimes just provide a silhouette of the turtle. In the case of this photo, the turtle is silhouetted because the photo is being taken from ~30 feet underwater, while the hawksbill turtle is on the surface. Despite this, we can still make an identification on this turtle. If you look closely, the outer edges of the back of the shell are jagged. This is a characteristic of a hawksbill turtle. Additionally, the bill of the turtle is pronounced. This makes it more likely to be a hawksbill than a green turtle. If the head was disproportionally large, I would lean towards it being a loggerhead, but this is not the case. The size of this turtle is difficult to tell in this image. There are no size references aside from the wave ripples. This turtle was only about a foot long. Although many turtles can be this size, hawksbills tend to be on the smaller size. Hawksbills only grow to about three feet in length. They will grow to 180 pounds on average. Green sea turtles will grow to around four feet long, and can weigh over 400 pounds!