Celebrated on June16th, World Sea Turtle Day is a day dedicated to one of the world’s oldest and most fascinating creatures. Unfortunately, this is also a day to remind everyone of the sea turtle’s endangered status.
Sea turtles have been around since the time of dinosaurs. They typically live to between 30 and 50 years of age, spending most of their lives at sea. Part of the reptile(爬行动物) family, sea turtles can hold their breath for up to five hours. This comes in handy since some species can dive as deep as 1,000 meters below the water’s surface before needing to come up for air. Sea turtles also like to get around, often migrating very long distances. One species can migrate over 12,000 km from nesting beaches in Japan all the way to feeding grounds near Mexico.
Female sea turtles return to the beach they hatched on to nest. Some species lay up to 250 eggs in a single nest, and each egg takes around 60 days to incubate(孵化). However, it’s estimated that only one in a thousand baby turtles can survive to adulthood.
Although it is worth having a day to celebrate these magnificent animals, World Sea Turtle Day also has a more serious purpose: to raise awareness of their difficult situation. Sea turtles are threatened with extinction. Plastic trash is a big problem because the turtles often mistake bags and other plastic items for food like jellyfish. In fact, half of all sea turtles have consumed plastic at some time in their lives.
Rising global temperature is another threat facing turtles. Turtle eggs that lie on warm sand are more likely to result in female turtles, which affects the animal’s diversity. Also, trash-covered beaches can make it hard for baby turtles to reach the sea.
However you want to celebrate World Sea Turtle Day, take some time to spread the word about what we can do to protect these ancient animals. Reducing the amount of plastic we use is just one small way we can help make sure sea turtles stick around for another 100 million years.
【小题1】Which of the following best explains “comes in handy” underlined in Paragraph 2?| A．is useful | B．is interesting | C．is close | D．is difficult |
| A．Turtles are a species which hates going around. |
| B．Turtles’ rate of survival is low though they are productive. |
| C．Turtles came into being long after the extinction of dinosaurs. |
| D．Turtles, belonging to reptile family, spend most of their lives on land. |
| A．Turtle eggs lying on warm sand tend to result in female turtles. |
| B．Sea turtles often mistake plastic bags and other plastic items for food. |
| C．Sea turtles are captured by fishermen for food or for other purposes. |
| D．Baby turtles will have difficulty in reaching the sea when they are on trash-covered beaches. |
| A．The factors of causing sea turtles to die out. |
| B．Raising the awareness of protecting sea turtles. |
| C．A brief introduction of sea turtles’ living habits. |
| D．How sea turtles lay eggs. |
