Welcome to Terrapin Station, NJ! Basically, we're a bunch of students (Ph.D., Master degree, college, and high school) studying a population of diamondback terrapins in Barnegat Bay, NJ. Terrapins are considered a "species of special concern" in the state of NJ which pretty much means that they're not considered endangered yet but they could be in the near future. With the help of our fearless leader, Dr. Hal Avery, and many Earthwatch volunteers (http://www.earthwatch.org/exped/avery.html), we participate in an ongoing mark-recapture study where we trap terrapins in nets, mark the turtles so we can recognize individuals, and release them back into the bay. This will eventually allow us to estimate the size of the population and thus know whether the population is declining.


In addition to the population study, we work on a bunch of independent research projects. I'll let the rest of the staff introduce themselves and their projects to you in the near future. As for me, I'm a second year Ph.D. candidate at Drexel University in Philadelphia. For my dissertation, I'm studying the hearing ability of terrapins and the effects of human-created sounds (especially noise from boat engines) on turtle behavior. Can terrapins hear? How much anthropogenic sound is present in the bay? Does this sound lead to changes in terrapin behavior? These are just a few of the questions that I'm interested in answering. More to come soon!