Printable sheet
Turtle tangled in plastic on the seafloor, surrounded by bottles, cans and bags. A moving printable about protecting the ocean; get the free PDF.
Printable sheet
Free for personal and educational use
Download PDFPrintA sad sea turtle wrapped in plastic strips, small fish, bubbles, a plastic bag, bottles, cans, six-pack rings, a straw, seaweed and coral.
Color the turtle in greens and browns and make the plastic a bright color so it stands out.
Design a beach sign that tells visitors why trash should never be left on the sand.
Unlike many land turtles, sea turtles cannot pull their heads back inside their shells.
A turtle tangled in plastic is a heartbreaking sight, and sadly it is a real one. Sea turtles have roamed the oceans for millions of years, yet floating plastic has become one of the biggest threats they face today.
Leatherback sea turtles eat mostly jellyfish, and other species snack on them too. Drifting in the water, a plastic bag looks a lot like a jellyfish, so turtles swallow it by mistake. Plastic cannot be digested and can block their stomachs. Turtles also get caught in fishing line, nets and six-pack rings that make it hard to swim or surface for air.
Sea turtles spend nearly their whole lives at sea, but females crawl back onto beaches to lay eggs in the sand. In Florida and other coastal states, volunteers patrol nesting beaches, and rescue centers nurse injured turtles back to health before releasing them into the ocean.
Use this page to ask kids how the turtle feels, how the plastic ended up in the sea and what they can do, like using cloth bags, picking up beach litter and snipping six-pack rings before they go in the trash.
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