Save the Sea Turtle

Six of the world’s seven species of marine turtle occur in Australian waters, including the:

• flatback turtle 
• green turtle 
• hawksbill turtle 
• leatherback turtle 
• loggerhead turtle 
• olive ridley turtle 

Only a few large nesting populations of the green, hawksbill and loggerhead turtles remain in the world. Australia has some of the largest marine turtle nesting areas in the Indo-Pacific region and has the only nesting populations of the flatback turtle.

Loggerhead turtles breed and nest mainly in the southern Great Barrier Reef (Capricorn/Bunker group) and adjacent mainland near Bundaberg. These nesting beaches support the only significant population of the species in the South Pacific Ocean. However, numbers have declined since the 1970s from about 1,000 breeding females to a few hundred females and any increase in mortality poses a risk of extinction. 



We have embarked on another conservation project based on the children's interest in the natural environment. To start our project we introduced the children to the different types of sea turtles and held a vote on what turtle we would like to adopt. The vote was close with 6 children choosing the Loggerhead and 6 choosing the Hawksbill. After a second vote we decided the Loggerhead should be our focus.

Our Turtle Song

Children are naturally interested in music and can retain information if it is presented in a song. The children are quite capable of making up their own song and have been working with Helen to write a song about the endangered sea turtle.

The song goes as follows:

The turtles are a going, a going, a going, the turtles are a going, going, going, gone...
Where are they going, going, going, where are they going, going today?
Stop the pollution, pollution, pollution, stop the pollution so the turtles don't die.

Fundraising

We have begun raising money to adopt a Loggerhead and on Thursday the 29th August made 'turtle eggs' to sell to our parents. The ingredients included: Arrowroot biscuits, condensed milk, cocoa, and coconut. The children rolled and shaped the balls to look like eggs.

Combining the Ingredients

Rolling the Turtle Eggs

Our Fundraising Stall

Making a Turtle

During our turtle project we have also made a Loggerhead Turtle out of recycled materials and hope to make a display using our turtle that demonstrates how pollution and nets interfere with Turtles health and survival.

Here we are stuffing newspaper into recycled plastic bags to create the turtles body.

Once the turtle was stuck together using lots of masking tape we set about painting him - true loggerhead colours...

Our net display is beginning and we will be adding the children's wrappers and other bits and pieces to get children thinking about where their rubbish goes and who it affects.

By involving children in a variety of learning experiences within the sea turtle project we are

catering for all different learning styles: visual, hands on, language based, kinesthetic and even musical. The children are seeing first hand the size and colour of the turtles, how pollution affects the turtle and are learning about ways they can help - fundraising and adopting a turtle.