4 Hawksbill Turtle at Merimbula, NSW
Identification history
| Eretmochelys imbricata | 12 Jul 2018 | PatrickCampbell | ||
| Eretmochelys imbricata | 2 Jul 2018 | PatrickCampbell | ||
| Eretmochelys imbricata | 20 Jan 2018 | rickcarey |
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Significant sighting
User's notes
rare and endangered Hawksbill Turtle in his hiding hole
7 comments
JackieMiles
wrote:
4 Jul 2018
Hmm, I was leaving this one alone, after a quick look at sea turtles suggested that green turtles also have a pointy beak. Bit of a distant memory now, but I seem to recall they look quite similar.
PatrickCampbell
wrote:
12 Jul 2018
I've had a good look at the books and enlarged the photo and I'm confident that this is a Hawksbill Turtle. Reasons being, the beak projects forward in Hawksbills, whereas it doesn't in Greens; there apprears to be an indication of two pairs of prefrontals further suggesting Hawksbill, whereas Greens only have one pair of prefrontal scales; there are only five, relatively large temporal scales on this specimen, as opposed to the more numerous, smaller temporal scales present on Greens.
JackieMiles
wrote:
13 Jul 2018
So by temporal scales do you mean all the scales behind the eye? I looked it up in Cogger's glossary and could make nothing of his description of where temporal scales were, but his photo of a green turtle shows about 10 scales between the eye and the start of the neck. Unfortunately his photos of hawksbills don't show that feature. Do your 5 temporal scales include the two above and behind the obvious 3 adjacent to the eye, or the two behind and below them? Mind you, this poor critter is carrying such a burden of barnacles, it's a bit hard to see how many scales he has.
PatrickCampbell
wrote:
18 Jul 2018
The temporal scales are located on the side of the head between the parietal scales and the supralabials, and behind the postocular scales. However I use the term more loosely in this case and include all the scales behind the eye (including the postoculars) as there's so few scales in the temporal region in this species. Basically, there's relatively fewer scales in the temporal region in Hawksbills than in Greens.
The barnacles tend to gather in the sutures between the scales and between the scutes, making them more visible, particularly on the marginal scutes in this photo.
The barnacles tend to gather in the sutures between the scales and between the scutes, making them more visible, particularly on the marginal scutes in this photo.
JackieMiles
wrote:
19 Jul 2018
Wow, that was as brain boggling as Cogger's glossary. The trouble with Cogger was he didn't actually label any of the scales on the turtle diagrams, but I guess I can flip to the snakes or lizards where they are labelled (I hope) and puzzle them all out. Been a long time since I've keyed out a reptile.
Location information
- Places Merimbula, NSW
Sighting information
- 1 Abundance
- 6 Apr 2015 12:34 PM Recorded on
- rickcarey Recorded by
Species information
- Eretmochelys imbricata Scientific name
- Hawksbill Turtle Common name
- Sensitive
- Very rare / threatened
- Non-Invasive
- Machine learning
- External link More information
Record quality
- Images or audio
- More than one media file
- Confirmed by an expert moderator
- Nearby sighting(s) of same species
- GPS evidence of location
- Description
- Additional attributes
