There are not many species of sea reptiles in the world and there are very few that visit England’s coastal water. Some turtles have been rarely recorded in our waters. These include the Loggerhead Turtle, the Kemps Ridley Turtle and more frequently the Green Turtle.

These turtles are ‘hard-shelled’ species and cold-blooded. They belong in warmer waters and one can only presume they have been in our waters by mistake, maybe because of ocean storms or possibly because they have been carried along by currents of the Gulf Stream.

We do, however, have one regular sea reptile visitor to our shores, so regular that it is considered native and that is the gigantic and unmistakeable marine reptile known as the Leatherback Turtle. The largest Leatherback Turtle on record is 916 kilogrammes.

The Leatherback Turtle is the only reptile in the world that is ‘endothermic’ which means it can create its own body heat (from food) like mammals and birds. Its food is jellyfish and in the summer months our waters have jellyfish in abundance for the Leatherback Turtle. It swims thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean which is an incredible ‘food journey’. It must really love our jellyfish.