Females choose who they mate with. If they are approached by a partner that is not suitable, she will frequently cover her cloaca (the hole where waste is excreted and where copulation takes place) with her back flippers and settle on the ocean bottom until the male goes away or until she needs to surface to breathe. Mating is not a fun task for adult turtles. Males will often bite females on their neck and flippers, leaving open wounds that heal slowly, often taking weeks to do so. Males will compete to mate with the female, so if one male is mating with a female, another male will frequently approach and try to pry the male off, or bite his head, flippers, or even his tail.