My eyes have been opened to the perils of the marine world. Mainly baby sea turtles in Australia.

Dear Mother Nature:

As a sentimental human I would like to ask you to spare a thought for all the sea turtles out there. Namely the baby ones which have such a treacherous journey to take just moments after they are born. For one, please spare more than just the one or two out of one hundred hatchlings who make  it to sea, and help more of the hatchlings to return to their home safely. However, I know that you like natural selection to weed out any of the weaker species and replace them with a new, faster, feistier, sharper and better model. Of course weak and feeble baby turtles that are mere few minutes old and have to travel for three days are a pretty dated application of natural selection, but nature is in the process of weeding them out and modifying them to adapt to their duties better. Or getting rid of them completely. However, I watched a documentary this evening about the Great Barrier Reef and turtle mating/laying eggs/hatching was very emotionally portrayed, and I truly connected with the poor turtles. What they go through every day is awful and must be stopped, but cannot be stopped due to the delicate balance of the ecosystem, which I completely understand. However, I will still continue to display empathy for the targeted species.

Let's face it, sea turtles have a hard life. I wouldn't want to be a sea turtle if I were reincarnated, not at all. For starters, sea turtles are born under the sand from eggs that the mother turtle laid god knows how long ago, and couldn't be bothered to stick around and wait for her babies to hatch. So she then went back to her home in the middle of the big blue ocean, and left her little darlings to fend for themselves in their first vulnerable minutes of life. On land. And with flippers. And in the middle of birdy hatching season as well, so plenty of big bad birdies that are ready to snatch away and mutilate incompetent or unwary turtle hatchlings, so that baby birdies will have full tummies. Survival of the fittest at its most extreme here... or possibly the luckiest?

Of course, Mother Turtle is fully aware of this. However, she only just got home from that bloody beach (aka "The Love Shack" according to younger turtles. What a misnomer, seeing as it was a beach from hell...  nest  building exercises and being around no one that really grabbed your attention with an evolutionary advantage potential. feelings of inadequacy surrounding mating with a male that didn't possess strong and defining features necessary for strong offspring). No way would she be travelling back to that place with it being hundreds of miles away and filled with memories that are already trying to be suppressed. That is if turtles even had emotions... If not, the female sea turtle would need the time at home to recover from the long journey and regain energy to look after her offspring.
She knows (maybe not consciously, but something instinctive is telling her(?))that there are lots of dangers out there, in between the hatching place and the turtle's true home hundreds of miles away. The chance of one turtle being able to do that and return intact would be incredibly slim, so in order to prevent the circumstance of no returning hatchlings she lays lots of eggs. HUNDREDS of them. Maybe thousands? Well, she most certainly buries the entire contents of her womb under the sand... I lie. She lays lots and lots and lots of eggs under the sand, ( a figure ranging between 50 and 200 to be slightly more specific/give a vague idea), leaves them to incubate for 2 months whilst she rushes off home.

This, of course, would be completely unacceptable in any human society. For one thing, if someone were to give birth to 50 to 200 children, they would expected to look after their offspring, especially for the first 2 months after birth. During this time, trust bonds need to form between parent and children, which can't be done when you're buggering off home. With such a vast number of offspring, in this day and age we are meant to honour each sibling with a similar amount of favour. Yes,  time will be spread thinly between them all, provided they return to the nest safely...
Yet the mother turtles seemed to forget that most young sea turtles would not have enough energy/strength/size/valour/luck/food to cross several hundreds of miles of ocean, led by a little internal GPS pointing to mummy. It would be a shame to not have anything swimming back when the other  baby turtles return, so lay lots of eggs. Who cares if the other 127 die on the way into the sea? At least you get the one or two to carry the gene line going. Besides, nobody has the time for 127 kids, especially if they can all make it across the ocean by themselves. However, it is not alright in this modern day, age and society to allow these lives to be born to die. Who cares about their physical attributes? So what if he's missing a flipper, he has a marvellous personality and tells limericks wonderfully. No one could possibly hurt such a soul like that, even if they were super hungry and this baby turtle was a prime target due to being a cripple... But they do. They are hurt. Slaughtered. Butchered. Murdered by bullies. Yet the mother is perfectly content with sending 99% of her hatchlings to certain death... how is that moral? In human terms, turtle mothers are psycho. Well and truly psychotic and dangerous, yet are completely blinded by their faiths and rituals...

However, turtle mothers are not moral. They are not human. They are sometimes dangerous, rarely suffer similar psychosis to humans and certainly do not have faiths and religions. Yes, they have their age-old rituals, but that's the only thing that comes even close to how they should stand next to a human society. Human Society seems in certain ways to go against the laws of nature, especially with the ever-changing laws and regulations of today...
So we deem turtles "immoral" and look down upon them because they have a different way of treating their young from us. Humans are pretty much stuck growing up for 18 years with mother and father constantly providing for them, and useless in the real world. Sea turtles are completely independent from day one, and because of this they don't need Mummy's help. What's the point of going back to a creature that has no certainty of relation? What use is relation anyway to sea turtles when all of their brothers and sisters are competitors? None. Turtles don't need human concepts. If we tried to use our human morals down there, I wouldn't expect us to last very long. Who is going to convince a shark not to eat them due to their turmoil?
Sharks eat now, listen later, so your list of reasons not to be eaten would be rather fruitless.

I talk of the first few hours of turtle lifedom being one of the toughest life challenges facing any animal on this planet, and obviously their experiences in this short time determines their fate in the next 5 minutes or so. First of all, the turtles have to crack open their shells under the cover of night (sunset is best) and wonder what te fuck is going on. But of course, they have no time to wonder what is going on as they feel an incline to head towards the sea because the flippers that they had been provided with were no use on land. Shuffle shuffle shuffle.. Similar hatchlings shuffle around hastily, all moving the same way... Of course the sand is a bit annoying to shuffle in, but it could be quite pleasant with the brothers and sisters...

Nature doesn't want you to play happily and in your own time, little turtles. EVERYTHING IS OUT TO GET THEM. THEY ARE THE PERFECT TARGET. No parent, no defence, slow, disorientated... easy meal for any sea birds of prey. Even though they are this young, they are still capable of the struggle, powered by the sharp adrenaline increase from fear, and often are incapable of concealing their discomfort and unhappiness towards the end. It is emotionally scarring for many turtles watching their brothers and sisters being picked off one by one whilst the smart ones evade the birds by zig-zagging down to the sea. Of course they don't have any true emotional connection with these other turtles. They were raised in eggs for goodness sake. However, these pawns demonstrate the wrath of other creatures in this world. Trust nothing. And shuffle really really quickly.
Many turtles were able to get out of an offensive with one of these birds with a great deal of luck and timing, but a memory of something like that at an early age? The feeling of sheer terror and relief and panic would provide a terrifying experience for any 18 minute-old  creature, and would certainly cause many repercussions with his social development throughout life. They must be right head-cases.

Lots of the turtles are weeded out by the initial trial, a sprint across the sands dodging hungry birds. Next comes the water trial. An endurance event, small turtles are eased in by being washed in by the tide so that they can quickly get used to the water. If they don't, then they die. Simple as that. Then of course some could be swept away by the tide and into  lairy crab's pincers, touched inappropriately and generally assaulted. The hatchlings that get away from these despicable creatures are truly worth their grit, despite their emotional baggage. After that, they've got to make a ridiculously long journey to a patch of seaweed that they deem fit to raise their colony in and go back to that bloody mating place when they're old enough to mate again.

Despite all this, their suicide rate is next to none!
All this shit happens to them so often that it is considered "normal" to them

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Sea turtles' lives are too hard for me to enjoy. It's all toil and angst and no play, alongisde fright and flight scenarios that must always be assessed. The odds that I would survive within the first 5 minutes of life are determined by luck and speed, and are slim. If I'd temporarily swapped with a turtle for a "Day in the life of Me." where I was a turtle, I'd be sat twiddling  my thumbs in a dark room for 23 hours and 55 minutes instead of doing what I wanted to do, swim around... However, it seems that I have gotten my "Buddy" eaten by a seagull, due to initial incompetence of working the flippers.
Sorry matey. Nature hates you :(

but when you live, you live forever anyway so you might not die out for a while yet.