Reptiles
Hawksbill Sea Turtle
Eretmochelys imbricata · also called hawksbill, carey
The hawksbill is the reef turtle — a small, elegantly patterned sea turtle that spends its life among corals, eating sponges that would poison almost anything else and, in doing so, keeping the reef in balance. Its gorgeous shell is also the reason it came so close to disappearing.
Overview
Hawksbills live on tropical coral reefs and in rocky coastal areas, lagoons, and mangrove estuaries throughout the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Unlike the ocean-crossing leatherback or the seagrass-grazing green turtle, the adult hawksbill is a reef specialist, holding a home range over a particular stretch of reef and returning to the same ledges and caves to rest.
The sponge-eater
Adult hawksbills eat mostly sea sponges, and specifically the kinds that are chemically defended and full of glass-like spicules — food that is effectively poisonous or inedible to other animals. The hawksbill’s narrow, pointed beak lets it dig sponges out of tight reef crevices. Because sponges compete with corals for space and can grow over them, hawksbill grazing acts as a check on sponge dominance, and it is one of the reasons healthy reefs have hawksbills on them. They round out the diet with anemones, jellyfish (whose stings barely affect them), and some algae.
Reproduction
Every two to four years, a female returns to the region where she hatched, comes ashore at night — often on small, secluded beaches under vegetation — and lays several clutches of around 140 eggs a season. As in all sea turtles, warmer sand produces more females. Hatchlings scramble to the sea and spend their early “lost years” drifting in the open ocean before recruiting to reef habitat as juveniles. Maturity takes two to three decades.
The tortoiseshell catastrophe
The hawksbill’s shell scutes are the natural material called “tortoiseshell,” prized for millennia for combs, boxes, jewellery, and inlay. Industrial-scale harvesting in the 19th and 20th centuries — Japan alone processed the shells of roughly two million hawksbills — devastated the species before international trade was banned by CITES. Recovery has been slow and incomplete: the global population is estimated to have fallen by more than 80% over three generations.
Ongoing threats and conservation
The hawksbill remains Critically Endangered. Present-day pressures include continued illegal shell and curio trade, egg and adult poaching, bycatch in nets and on longlines, coral reef degradation that removes its food and habitat, coastal development and lighting on nesting beaches, and plastic ingestion. Conservation efforts centre on protecting nesting beaches and key reefs, cracking down on the tortoiseshell market (including consumer campaigns aimed at tourists), reducing fishery bycatch, and community-based nest protection programmes across the tropics.
Hawksbill Sea Turtle: common questions
What does a hawksbill turtle eat, and why does it matter for reefs?
Adult hawksbills are among the very few animals that specialise in eating sea sponges, including species loaded with toxins and glass-like silica spicules that deter almost everything else. By grazing these fast-growing sponges, hawksbills prevent them from smothering slow-growing reef-building corals, which keeps the reef's mix of species diverse. A reef that loses its hawksbills tends to shift toward sponge and algal dominance. They also eat some anemones, jellyfish (they are largely immune to the stings), and marine plants.
Why is the hawksbill Critically Endangered?
More than any other sea turtle, the hawksbill was hunted for its shell. The overlapping amber-and-brown scutes are the raw material for "tortoiseshell," worked into combs, jewellery, glasses frames, and inlay for centuries; Japan alone imported the shells of an estimated two million hawksbills in the 20th century before the trade was banned under CITES in the 1970s–90s. On top of that historic collapse, hawksbills still face egg poaching, illegal shell trade, bycatch, the loss of nesting beaches, coral reef decline, and plastic ingestion, and populations remain small and fragmented.
Is hawksbill meat or shell still sold?
International commercial trade in hawksbill products is banned under CITES, and it is illegal in most countries, but a black market persists. Tourist shops in parts of the Caribbean, Latin America, and Southeast Asia still sell "tortoiseshell" jewellery and whole polished shells, and hawksbill eggs and meat are consumed in some regions despite the meat sometimes being toxic (from the sponges the turtle eats). Buying any hawksbill product directly funds the killing of a Critically Endangered animal.
How can you tell a hawksbill from a green turtle?
The hawksbill has a narrow, pointed, bird-like beak (a green turtle's is blunt and rounded), two pairs of scales between the eyes (greens have one), and thick, overlapping shell scutes with a serrated rear edge, often strikingly patterned. It is also generally smaller, and it is found around reefs and rocky areas rather than the seagrass beds that green turtles graze.