Sea turtles' eggs are laid at night to minimize the likelihood of their discovery by predators, and the offspring, when ready to emerge from their eggshells and dig their way out of the sand, hatch at night for the same reason. Since the offspring are especially vulnerable immediately after hatching, it is vital for them to get to the sea as soon as possible. Turtle hatchlings use a number of cues to tell them where the sea is. The most important cue seems to be light. The night sky is usually brightest over the sea. Cover a turtle hatchling's eyes, and it cannot find the sea even if there is other information available, such as a downward slope of the sand toward the water's edge. The hatchlings respond to light cues covering a vertical range of only about 30° above the horizon or, depending on the species, even less. Responding only to lights that are close to the horizon decreases the risk that hatchlings will become confused. They seem less attracted to yellow light than to other colors – loggerhead turtles show an aversion to yellow light – and this preference may keep them from becoming disoriented by the rising Sun. It is usually safest to have more than one internal compass, and hatchlings seem to be guided by more than light alone. They steer away from sand dunes and vegetation. Possibly these objects merely block light behind them that might mislead turtle hatchlings about where the sea is, but it is also possible that turtles are sensitive to the shape of such objects and process these shapes as signals that the sea is located in some other direction. Such reinforcing cues, however, are not enough to guide hatchlings away from the artificial lights that now burn on many a beach environment. Artificial lighting is often strong enough to completely overcome the signals a hatchling sea turtle is programmed to recognize. Artificial light, if it is bright enough, becomes a stimulus so powerful that the hatchlings respond to nothing else, crawling toward it from hundreds of meters away. If all goes well and the hatchlings scramble over the sand in the right direction, avoid their enemies, and reach the surf, a new set of orienting mechanisms takes over. As soon as they are afloat, the hatchlings begin to swim at something over 1.5 kilometers per hour. They dive into the path of the wave undertow, where the receding waters sweep them outward, away from the beach. When they surface again, the head for open sea. This time, they are guided not by sight but apparently exclusively by the direction of the incoming waves. Experiments with loggerheads, greens, and leatherbacks have shown that hatchlings swim toward approaching waves; but if the sea is calm, they swim randomly or in circles. Under experimental conditions, hatchlings will swim into the waves even if doing so sends them back to the beach again. The farther a hatchling gets from shore, the less reliable wave direction becomes as a pointer to the open sea. Researchers have shown that hatchling green sea turtles released from a hatchery in Borneo, East Malaysia, are able to navigate around small islands and keep swimming offshore, even when there are few waves to guide them. They may be relying on yet another internal compass this time oriented to Earth's magnetic field. Recent experiments suggest that leatherback and olive ridley hatchlings "switch on" their geomagnetic compass almost as soon as they are out of the nest. Though the hatchlings position themselves geomagnetically as soon as they leave the nest and appear to be able to use that position as a reference point, they will not follow it automatically if other cues, such as light and sound, are available. Hatchlings find their geomagnetic compass useful only after they have already been able to determine the direction they should swim. A simple directional compass – one that always sent the turtles westward, for instance – would be useless if the open sea lay in some other direction. Therefore, a magnetic compass does not so much tell a hatchling turtle which way to go as keep it on course once it has determined the direction it should swim from some other cue.