The leatherback sea turtle is like the other remaining species of marine turtles, Once upon a time, it lived on land and had four legs but about 110 million years ago it developed massive flippers and populated the Seven Seas---before there were Seven Seas.
Probably, you, and most of your friends, have never given a moment's thought to . . . the leatherback sea turtle. And, though you may not even have known it exists the leatherback probably is the most amazing animal on earth. Sounds nuts but it is true.
Here's the tale.
It begins some a hundred ten million years ago. . . when the world was a very different place.
Although humans look around at the world and think that the big mountains and long rivers we see today have always been there, nothing could be farther from the truth.
For example, today's mighty Himalayan Mountains were not mighty when turtles first entered the oceans. Indeed, the Himalayas were still 65,000,000 years away from even existing.
Antarctica was joined to Australia when the earliest leatherbacks took to the sea and would not uncouple from it for about 30 million more generations of these sea animals.
South America was not far from West Antarctica. Another 80,000,000 years would go by before Antarctica would turn into the frigid continent of today.
The South Atlantic Ocean was still forming. In fact, not only were there no Seven Seas way back then, there were not seven continents, either, only two supercontinents.
This ancient time spawned these ancient marine turtles.
When the ancestors of today's leatherbacks turned to the ocean, there were no birds in the sky, no elephants, mastodons, mammoths, and not even a tiny mouse because there were no birds or mammals at all on earth.
The awesome Tyrannosaurus Rex would not terrorize the planet for about four hundred thousand centuries more. Yes, that is right: 400,000 centuries.
Your biology teacher may have told you that dolphins and whales originated from land animals and went to sea long ago. That is really impressive! Except to a sea turtle. Why? Because leatherbacks had been swimming the world's oceans for more than fifty million years before those mighty creatures---which are closely related to hippopotamus---evolved, left the land, and entered the oceans, too.
These are the largest of all sea turtles and can weigh nearly a ton, They were here way before the first dinosaur, survived the greatest mass extinction the world has ever experienced, and flourished. But, it is not their species longevity---amazing as that is---that warrants the title of most amazing animal on earth.
Consider this: we all marveled , and properly so, at Michael Phelps' 200 meter freestyle world record time. But, in the time it took him to go that distance, a huge leatherback, weighing about as much as the entire offensive line of a professional football team, would swim to thousand meter mark---more than a third of a mile ahead of Michael.
In fact, this magnificent relic is listed in the 1992 Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest reptile on earth!
It might be fairer to our race if the world's fastest sprinter competed against a swimming leatherback. At 100 meters, the race would be very close and maybe won by a nose---by the human. At 400 meters, it'd be a blow-out---for the turtle.
Not only does this ancient being swim five times faster than the fastest human on earth, it may also be the world's greatest long-distance migrating creature. One of these giants was monitored migrating 13,000 miles---and that was only to the destination from which it needed to return.
In addition to its incredible speed and stamina, it is the deepest diving marine turtle on the planet, regularly diving nearly 4,000 feet deep into the ocean. To put that depth into perspective, today's nuclear attack submarines are allowed to dive to a maximum normal operating depth of about 1,600 feet because they'd crush under the sea pressure at about 2,400 feet. The world's most modern technology and strongest metal and composite materials are no match for the diving ability of this ancient reptile.
There is also the incredible fact that leatherbacks are found not only in all tropical and subtropical waters on earth but have been seen as far north as the Arctic Circle, in Alaska, near Quebec, and Norway, and as far south as the Cape of Good Hope and even below New Zealand, in waters as cold as 40°F. Yet, although they are cold blooded reptiles, they remain toasty warm because they can maintain a body temperature as much as 32°F (18°C) higher than the surrounding water.
Disgracefully, in just three decades, man's rapacious greed and carelessness have decimated the numbers of this magnificent creature. Between 1980 and 2005, the number of leatherback sea turtles in Mexico declined 99% , a catastrophic decline since that country had about two thirds of the world's total leatherbacks.
Mexico should not be singled out because, all across the globe, leatherback populations collapsed. For example, just a few years ago Malaysia had the world's largest population of leatherbacks nests: 10,000. In 2008, there were two.
Today, more than a hundred countries, hundreds of conservation organizations, and tens of thousands of volunteers have marshaled forces to stem the decline of this magnificent creature but it remains very vulnerable.
Despite laws to the contrary their nests are routinely plundered for eggs.
Untold numbers die from eating plastic bags which they confuse with jellyfish, their primary food.
More drown in commercial fishing and shrimp nets which we euphemistically call "incidental catch."
We destroy their habitat, build our homes on their beaches and wonder why the sea turtles are going extinct.
This most ancient of all creatures has survived more than a hundred million generations but might not survive two more generations of mankind.
Somewhere, in the Heavens, Angels are weeping.
Are we listening?
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