She then lays her clutch , which consists of approximately 100 leathery-skinned eggs, in the burrow and covers them carefully with sand. Lastly, she buries the pit entirely to disguise the location of her nest. Her parenting job completed, she returns to the sea, leaving her young to fend for themselves. Green sea turtle eggs take about two months to incubate. Studies indicate that the temperature of the eggs during incubation influences the sex of baby sea turtles.
Lower temperatures tend to produce males, while higher temperatures tend to produce females.
The baby turtles are able to break through the eggshell and hatch by chipping away at the shell with a structure called an egg tooth , a temporary hard protuberance on their beaks. After hatching, the tiny one-ounce turtles take a number of days to dig their way out of their nest. Emerging from the nest must be a group effort as one hatching would not be able to escape by itself. Working together, the hatchings scrape away the roof of the nest until they reach about an inch away from the surface of the beach. The hatchlings nearest to the surface stop their digging if the sand feels hot, indicating that it may be daytime.