Creature Feature:Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Creature Feature: Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Creature Feature: Hawksbill Sea Turtle

This week’s Creature Feature is the Hawksbill Sea Turtle.  This reptile is found throughout the shallow tropical waters of the world. Being reptiles, Hawksbill Sea Turtles are cold blooded, allowing them to use sun’s energy to regulate their metabolic activities.  Hawksbill Sea Turtles rest on the ocean’s surface warming their bodies. Sea Turtle can remain underwater for 4-7 hours which even allows them to sleep submerged. Hawksbills nesting habits are similar to other turtles.  They dig shallow nests in soft sand, and lay ping pong ball sized eggs which hatch in about 60 days.

Scientific name: Eretmochelys imbricata

  • Size: 24-45inches
  • Location: Tropical Waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean

Photography Tip

Turtles can be very co-operative underwater models.  Sea turtles are spotted in the shallow areas of a reefs which will let a photographer to shoot in ambient light.  With an abundance of ambient light to shoot the subject underwater photographers should dial in their cameras white balance settings to match the ambient light.  Capturing a properly exposed image of a white balance slate, or even white sand will allow you to pick that image as a color scheme for your manual white balance setting.  Shooting your photographs in RAW can easily let you adjust white balance in Adobe Lightroom post-processing.  To master shooting underwater video a photographer needs to know how to manually white balance in the camera!

Protect these critically endangered animals by reducing your use of plastics like plastic bags.

Gear Recommendation:

Vello White Balance Disk, Vello White Balance Slates

If you have trouble ID’ing fish from your last dive Pick up a copy of REEF Fish Identification – Florida Caribbean Bahamas

Want to improve your underwater Digital Development?  Try Adobe Lightroom and enroll in my next tutorial course!

Follow Raak Bottom Imaging on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube