A rare sighting on one of our last trips... A Leatherback Turtle, Dermochelys coriacea, crossed our way. Very fast swimming, almost like a dolphin, we could not believe what we saw. Then we identified the huge animal as a sea turtle!
The leatherback turtle is the largest of all living turtles. It can easily be differentiated from other modern sea turtles by its lack of a bony shell. Instead, the carapace of the leatherback turtle is covered by skin and the turtle's oily flesh. It has a cosmopolitan global range, and comes to the Azores with the Gulfstream, who also brings jellyfish, the turtle's main prey.
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