How Long Can Sea Turtles Stay Underwater? (With Pictures and Video)

Most sea turtles spend their entire life underwater, but they occasionally need to get out for air. Sea turtles are not like most animals that live in the ocean, they don’t have gills, instead they have two lungs like most terrestrial animals. So, how long can sea turtles stay underwater?

On average sea turtles can spend between 1 and 2 hours underwater during normal activity. If they sleep, sea turtles can spend an average of 5 to 7 hours underwater. And during intense activity they can spend 30 to 45 minutes.

But, sea turtles is a very general term, there are different species of sea turtles, 7 to be more precise, and each one of them is different from the other, and so is the amount of time they can spend underwater. Here is a table with the maximum amount of time each sea turtle species can spend underwater:

• Green Sea Turtle: 5 to 8 hours
• Leatherback Sea Turtle: 7 to 10 hours
• Kemp’s Ridley: 7 to 10 hours
• Olive Ridley: 7 to 10 hours
• Loggerhead Sea Turtle: 5 to 7 hours
• Hawksbill Sea Turtle: 5 to 8 hours
• Flatback Sea Turtle: 5 to 7 hours

As you can see there are slight differences between the amount of time each sea turtle species can stay underwater, but in general most of them can spend at least 5 hours underwater. During my research I’ve seen numerous researches and reports that had slightly different numbers, but most of them stayed within the ranges I mentioned above. But what is more interesting than the amount of time they can spend underwater, is the way they achieve those numbers. So let’s take a closer look at how those turtles manage to stay so long underwater.

How Sea Turtles Breathe

Let’s start with the most essential thing, the way they breathe. Even if the seven species have some clear visual differences between them, the way they work on the inside is identical when it comes to breathing, so in this article I will address all sea turtle species at the same time. If there is something different about one species I will make it clear that I am talking about a certain species, so we don’t get things mixed up.

Like most animals that have lungs, the way turtles manage to get air into them is through their nose. Turtles have their nose positioned right above their mouth, as you can see in the picture below.

Up until now, everything is similar to the way we breathe, but after they inhale the air through their noses things start to be a little different from what we do. And the reason is that turtles don’t have a flexible torso.

When you and I inhale air, our torso will make itself smaller, and when we exhale the torso will expand. This can happen because our torso is made out of independent ribs that are somewhat flexible. The torso of a turtle is covered with a shell, which is also made out of ribs, but those ribs have all fused together to form the shell, and by doing so they’ve lost all their flexibility.

Because turtles don’t have the same flexibility as most animals, the way their lungs and their muscles in that area are set up are completely different. The kind of setup that they have allows them to have a better control over how they breathe. Thus allowing them to hold air in their lungs for extended periods of time, without too much effort.

If you want to know more about turtle shells, how they’ve evolved and why they are not flexible you should check out my article: What Are Turtle Shells Made Of ? (with Pictures and Video), in this article I talk about the different parts of the shell, how they came into existence, and there are also pictures and videos that show you the inside of a turtle shell.

So turtles are able to hold air in their lungs without too much effort, but that is not enough to make them be able to stay for 5 or 8 hours underwater. Another important thing is the way they use the oxygen they store in their lungs, so let’s take a look at that.

How Sea Turtles Use Their Air Underwater

Another thing that differentiates turtles from most animals is the fact that they are reptiles. Reptiles have a different way of using the resources that the body needs to keep functioning. Basically reptiles are able to last a lot longer than other animals, while using fewer resources like food, water and air. And all of this is due to their slow metabolic rate.

A simple explanation of the metabolic rate is this: the metabolic rate is the speed at which a body is functioning. A fast metabolic rate means that that animal will have a lot of energy and it will be very active, but this also means that it will need a lot more food, water and air. A slow metabolic rate means that the animal will be less energetic, it won’t always be very active, but at the same time it won’t need too much food, water, or air.

Having a slower metabolic rate has a few advantages and disadvantages, for example a disadvantage would be that turtles are not able to produce their own body heat so they rely on the temperature of the surrounding area to maintain a proper body heat level. But there are also advantages, like the fact that they need to use considerably less oxygen than other animals, so they are able to stay a very long time underwater.

Sea turtles also have one final thing that drastically contributes to their ability to stay for a long time underwater, and that final thing is called the cloaca.

How the Cloaca Helps Sea Turtles “Breathe Underwater”

A cloaca is a small orifice that can usually be found at the back end of an animal, and it has many different roles depending on the species of the animal.

Photo by Bstoren on Wikipedia

You might have heard at some point something like: turtles are able to breath through their butts. And as weird as it sounds that is kind of true, the cloaca is positioned at the end of the turtle’s body so it can be considered the butt of the turtle. But the cloaca acts differently than how you would normally expect a “back end” to work.

The cloaca has 4 important roles: execution, urination, reproduction and breathing. Turtles use only one orifice for those things and that is the cloaca.

The cloaca works in a similar way to the lungs, when the turtle is inside the water the cloaca will act like a pump that will suck water inside and after it gathers all the oxygen from it, it will expel the water out and then it will start over. Due to the way things are arranged on the inside of the turtle this process is less exhausting than normal breathing.

Here is a short video that shows how cloacal breathing works:

The cloaca is present on all turtle species, not only on sea turtles. So if you want to see a cloaca and you own any kind of turtle you can look at its tail and see it. If you don’t own a turtle, here are a couple of links that will show you a cloaca up close. I chose not to post them as pictures because they can be a little gross, but if that is not a problem for you, here are the links:

Link 1

Link 2

The final thing that I want to cover in this article is hibernation. During hibernation turtles are able to spend several months underwater without having to get out for air.

Sea Turtles Hibernation

When winter comes sea turtles will do one of two things, they will either migrate to a warmer place, or they will hibernate.

If they choose to hibernate they will look for a suitable place where they will dig a hole, and they will stay there until the bad weather passes. A place where turtles can be found hibernating is the Gulf of Mexico.

When a sea turtle enters the hibernation state it will reduce all the functions of the body to the bare minimum. They can do this by slowing down even further their already slow metabolic rate. This will allow them to spend even more time underwater then they normally can.

Under normal circumstances they won’t be able to last an entire winter just due to their slowed down metabolic rate, but this is where the cloaca becomes very important. Normally the quantity of oxygen obtained from the cloaca is not very significant, but if the metabolic rate is slowed down to a certain level, sea turtles are able to live just with the air that the cloaca provides.

So the slow metabolic rate and the energy efficient cloaca, allow the turtle to stay for entire months underwater when they are hibernating.

Related Questions

Can sea turtles sleep underwater? Yes, all sea turtles sleep underwater. But they usually try to stay as close to the surface as possible, in case they want to get some oxygen.

Can sea turtles drown? Yes, if sea turtles stay too long underwater they can drown. But this only happens if they get caught by a net or something similar, otherwise there is no reason for a sea turtle to drown.

Are sea turtles endangered? Yes, most sea turtles are endangered at the moment. There are a lot of organizations that are doing their best to help sea turtles, but the results are mixt at the moment. But it’s hard to tell how things are going when you talk about something as the survival of a species that lives in the ocean.

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