Sea Turtle Ecology

Sea turtles are enchanting and fascinating animals and you’ll learn all about them on the Big Blue Sea Turtle Ecology course. Their calm demeanour and stunning appearance have captivated humans for centuries, earning them great cultural importance all over the world. However, being some of the prettiest animals in the ocean isn’t as peachy as it sounds. Turtles all over the world are exploited and hunted for their carapaces in the use of products such as combs and jewellery, and eggs are poached for the exotic food trade. 

Despite encompassing only seven species, marine turtles are distributed globally, inhabiting nearly all of the oceans, fulfilling ecological niches and displaying incredibly variance in morphology and life-history traits. This makes them, as a group of species, extremely vulnerable to climate change, bycatch and entanglement as well as plastic ingestion. 

Marine turtles provide vital services in marine and coastal ecosystems, such as fertilizing sand of nesting beaches with organic matter, grazing on algae and seagrasses as well as managing populations of marine invertebrates. 

If you love marine turtles just as much as we do, enrol in the Sea Turtle Ecology speciality program. With our very own turtle expert, you’ll learn to identify sea turtle species, discover their history and role in marine ecosystems, and threats to their survival.

Our Sea Turtle Ecology course is a classroom-only course. If you would like to add some diving, it’s no problem!  You’ll simply be charged our fun diving rate for the number of dives you do, and we’ll take you out in search of our shelly friends.

What comes next?

• Get your Open Water certification and dive into the world below the waves.
• Sign up for some fun dives to meet some of the sea turtles that live around Koh Tao.

Don’t forget! Because of the extra nitrogen your body builds up while scuba diving, you cannot fly within 24hrs of your last dive.

Are you fit to dive?

Scuba diving is an activity that requires a certain level of physical health. Read this medical questionnaire. If you can answer yes to any of the questions you may require medical clearance to enrol in a diving course. Contact us for more information.