A dead leatherback sea turtle was found on the shores of Barangay Bignay 2, Sariaya, Quezon Tuesday morning.
According to the Environment and Natural Resources Office (ENRO) staff who examined it, the sea turtle was a female weighing over 400 kilograms.
The giant leatherback sea turtle is 6 feet long and 3 feet wide.
The ENRO could not say what caused the sea turtle’s death because it did not undergo necropsy. Authorities and resident fishers immediately buried the turtle.
The turtle has a PH0371K geotag meaning it has been previously documented.
The leatherback sea turtle sometimes called the lute turtle or leathery turtle or simply the luth, is the largest of all living turtles and is the fourth-heaviest modern reptile behind three crocodilians. It is the only living species in the genus Dermochelys and family Dermochelyidae.
It can easily be differentiated from other modern sea turtles by its lack of a bony shell, hence the name. Instead, its carapace is covered by skin and oily flesh.
Leatherbacks have delicate, scissor-like jaws. Their jaws would be damaged by anything other than a diet of soft-bodied animals, so they feed almost exclusively on jellyfish. Remarkably, this large, active animal can survive on a diet of jellyfish, which are composed mostly of water and appear to be a poor source of nutrients.
The largest leatherback ever recorded was almost 10 feet (305 cm) from the tip of its beak to the tip of its tail and weighed in at 2,019 pounds (916 kg).