The Intelligent Sea Turtles of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
By: Jim Scherrer
Sea turtles are very intelligent creatures of nature; they continue coming to Puerto Vallarta regardless of the swine flu scare, the border town drug wars, or the global recession! They don’t visit Vallarta for its perfect climate, its eight beautiful golf courses, its world class deep sea fishing, its hundreds of fine restaurants, nightclubs and discotheques, its magnificent sunsets, or the colorful tropical flora and fauna in the surrounding Sierra Madre hillsides; they visit Vallarta strictly for its 35 miles of sandy beaches. However, the fact that they love the beaches around PV is only a small clue as to what makes the sea turtles so incredibly intelligent.
Sea turtles constitute a single radiation that was distinct from all other turtles during the Late Cretaceous Period, the “age of dinosaurs”, at least 100 million years ago. It’s hard to imagine that approximately 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous–Tertiary Extinction Event (KT Mass Extinction), the planet endured catastrophic events such as massive asteroid impacts and/or tremendous volcanic activity resulting in significant climate changes affecting all of the Earth’s plant and animal life. Sea turtles were among the few species to survive these traumatic events and related climate changes.
Today, there are only seven living species of sea turtles worldwide and members of five or six of these species manage to visit Vallarta annually. Six of the seven species have hard shells and only one has a soft shell; it’s the leatherback turtle, the largest of them all and a periodic visitor to Vallarta. The leatherbacks grow for 30 years, from hatchlings weighing about an ounce, to maturity weighing up to 1,300 pounds and measuring up to 7 feet long and 5 feet wide; they can live to be more than 80 years old.
Although sea turtles representing most of the species visit Vallarta, the majority of them are of the Olive Ridley species. They are much smaller than the leatherbacks, measuring less than 3 feet long and weighing just a little over 100 pounds with dark olive green heart shaped domed shells.
