What is the biggest sea turtle ever recorded?

A male leatherback found at Harlech, Wales on 23 September 1988. He measured 2.91 m (9 ft 6.5 in) and weighed 961.1 kg (2,120 lb), and holds the Guinness World Record for the largest turtle.

How big is a baby sea turtle?

A sea turtle hatchling is about two inches long — small enough to sit in the palm of your hand. It has to grow into an adult many times that size without a parent to help it.

How Big Is a Sea Turtle? Compare One to Yourself

Q: How big is a sea turtle?

It depends on the species. The smallest, the Kemp’s ridley, has a shell about 2 feet long and weighs 70 to 100 pounds. The largest, the leatherback, has a shell 5 to 6 feet long and weighs 750 to 1,000 pounds — bigger than most adults. The other five species fall in between. Figures from NOAA Fisheries.

1. How tall are you?

🔒 Your height stays on this page. It is never saved and never sent anywhere — close the tab and it is gone.

You are 4 ft 2 in tall

Slide to your height

FeetInches

2. Pick a sea turtle

3. Stand next to it

You — 4 ft 2 in tall
Leatherback sea turtle — shell up to 6 ft long

A big Leatherback sea turtle is 1.4× your height — 1 ft 10 in longer than you are tall.

Both drawn at the same scale. The measurement is the shell (carapace) length — the turtle’s head and flippers stick out beyond it, so a real one looks even bigger.

Shell length: 5–6 ft
Weight: 750–1,000 lb
Compared with you: 1.4× your height

The biggest turtle alive, and the only one with a rubbery shell instead of a hard one.

All six sea turtles, lined up next to you

Leatherback6 ft
You4 ft 2 in
Green4 ft
Loggerhead3 ft 6 in
Hawksbill3 ft 6 in
Olive Ridley2 ft 6 in
Kemp's Ridley2 ft

Turtle bars are the longest shell each species reaches. Yours is your height.

The largest turtle ever measured was a leatherback that washed up at Harlech, Wales on 23 September 1988. He was 2.91 metres long — nine and a half feet — and weighed 961.1 kilograms, about the same as a small car.

How big is a sea turtle, species by species?

Adult shell length and weight for each sea turtle species, from NOAA Fisheries
Sea turtle	Shell length	Weight
Leatherback Dermochelys coriacea	5–6 ft	750–1,000 lb
Green Chelonia mydas	3–4 ft	250–400 lb
Loggerhead Caretta caretta	2.5–3.5 ft	200–350 lb
Hawksbill Eretmochelys imbricata	2–3.5 ft	100–150 lb
Olive Ridley Lepidochelys olivacea	2–2.5 ft	Up to 100 lb
Kemp's Ridley Lepidochelys kempii	2 ft	70–100 lb

Adult figures from the Quick Facts panel of each NOAA Fisheries species page. The seventh species, the flatback, lives only around Australia and is not measured in the same table — meet it on our species comparison page.

Every one of them started smaller than your hand

A sea turtle hatchling is about two inches long. You are 25 hatchlings tall. That two-inch baby has to cross an ocean, dodge crabs, gulls and sharks, and grow into the animal you just stood next to — with no parent anywhere in sight.

How long that takes, and what decides whether it hatches male or female, is a story of its own: try the nest temperature lab and read about the sea turtle life cycle.

Where these numbers come from

Adult shell lengths and weights: NOAA Fisheries species directory — the “Quick Facts” panel on each sea turtle page.
Largest turtle ever recorded: Guinness World Records.

Now grow one yourself

Hatch at two inches, run for the waves, cross the ocean and come home to nest.

Play the lifecycle game →