Species profile
Chelonia mydas
Green sea turtle
This is a curated published estimate, not a live census. Estimates may refer to mature individuals, wild individuals or a documented range and are not directly comparable between species.
EN · Endangered — Endangered — very high risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Endangered. Adult green turtles are the only truly herbivorous sea turtles, grazing seagrass meadows like underwater cows — which tints their fat green and gives them their name. Its recorded population direction is increasing. That is encouraging, but it does not remove continuing pressures or make every population secure.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with marine, coastal. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. Decades after hatching, female green turtles return to nest on the very beach where they were born, navigating by the Earth's magnetic field. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
A green turtle's sex is set by the temperature of the sand: warmer nests produce more females, so climate change is skewing hatchling ratios. The catalogue records 4 principal pressures for this profile: Bycatch, Egg harvesting, Seagrass loss, Coastal development. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Protecting and reconnecting habitat is a priority, together with infrastructure planning that keeps feeding, breeding or migration routes functional. Fishery management needs enforceable limits, more selective gear, bycatch reduction and coordinated compliance across jurisdictions. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
Loading occurrences…
Listen to this species
No recordings available yet — new Xeno-canto audio arrives with every sync.