Sea turtle swimming above coral, seaweed, bubbles, and flowing ocean currents

Sea Turtle Gliding Over a Busy Coral Reef

A sea turtle drifts past tube coral, waving seaweed, round bubbles, and ribbon-like currents curling across the water.

🎨 How to color it

Color the sea turtle’s shell olive green, its flippers seafoam, the tube coral peach, and the swirling current lines pale blue. Use sharp colored pencils for the shell plates, face spots, and coral openings, then switch to light marker strokes for the wider water ribbons. Try making the bubbles fade from turquoise at the bottom to almost clear at the top, as if they are rising through sunlit water.

The story behind this coloring page

The Current’s Secret Door — Under the crooked fan coral, Tavi kept a small nook lined with smooth pebbles. Read the full story →

Under the crooked fan coral, Tavi kept a small nook lined with smooth pebbles. She wanted one cool moon-snail shell for the empty middle spot, so she slipped beyond the seaweed gate where the water hummed zzz-oo, zzz-oo against her flippers. The current tugged harder than she expected, and it stole her best pebble from the edge of her shell. Tavi almost turned back.

Then a lanternfish blinked from a crack in the coral, tiny as a secret. “Not that way,” he whispered. “The moon shells roll where the water sings low.” He led her through loops of bubbles and silver sand that tickled like sugar. Tavi found no moon-snail shell, but in a quiet hollow she discovered a round piece of blue coral, worn smooth by waves, exactly the size of her empty spot.

Back under the crooked fan coral, Tavi set the blue coral in her nook. It smelled faintly of salt and deep water. Next time you trace the bubbles above her, see if you can guess which one carried the lanternfish’s wink home.