Green sea turtles are ancient animals – their relatives have been swimming in the Earth's oceans for more than 100 million years, which means they were already around when dinosaurs were alive. A single turtle can live for 80 years or more, slowly cruising the ocean and munching on seagrass and algae.
Female green sea turtles return to the same beach where they were born to lay their own eggs – even if that beach is thousands of kilometres away. They swim all that distance using Earth's magnetic field like an invisible map. When a female arrives, she crawls up the sand at night, digs a hole with her flippers, lays around 100 eggs, covers them up and returns to the sea.
The eggs hatch after about two months. Baby turtles – called hatchlings – are tiny and must immediately scramble down the beach and into the ocean, guided by the moonlight reflected on the water. It is an incredible journey for something no bigger than your palm. Only a small number of hatchlings make it all the way to adulthood.
Along Djibouti's coast, green sea turtles feed on seagrass meadows that grow in the shallow bays. Seagrass is important for the ocean because it produces oxygen, stores carbon and provides food and shelter for dozens of other species. By grazing on it, turtles actually help keep the seagrass healthy and the ocean in good shape.