Does a turtle by any other name smell so... sweet?

What a productive week we've had at Terrapin Station! Team 5 has really shown us their stuff, and we're very sorry to see them go today:(

This group has been able to apply their turtle knowledge to lots of other species in the herpetology field:

To begin, before the team even had a chance to capture a terrapin, they caught a box turtle without even trying last Monday! A female box turtle had walked into one of our crab pots - on land! Another experience came when one volunteer chose to bushwhack through Warren Grove with Co-PI, Dr. Walt Bien. Sure enough, when you're with Walt you're in for some serious herping! Volunteer Amanda was in it to help with their Lepidoptera research, but sure enough they came across a timber rattle snake in the process! She had lots of stories about holding the snake with tongs while it was threateningly rattleing at her!

To continue the herpetology adventure this week, Dr. Jim Spotila lead the volunteers through a box turtle next excavation! The box turtle was observed nesting on June 8 when Jim and other leading sea turtle researchers were at the field station for a conference. As you can see in the picture, the volunteers really enjoyed 'candle-lighting' the eggs to look for signs of the baby box turtles.

Last but not least, our volunteers were very surprised to find an incredibly large, 30 lb terrapin in a fyke net yesterday. Wait, that doesn't sound right... it was a SNAPPING TURTLE!!!! Normally, snappers and terrapins don't share habitats, snapping turtles being fresh water inhabitants, and terrapins prefering brackish water. For this reason, we've never caught a snapping turtle in one of our traps in Forsythe National Refuge before. This large male was not happy to be in the trap, and it was almost impossible to get him out without someone having the guts to put their hands in the net at the risk of losing some fingers... Luckily, fellow Avery lab graduate student, Steven Pearson, was in town for the day and being a fresh water turtle ecologist he was more than happy to pull the turtle out of the trap for us. A few claw scratches later, Steve had the snapper contained on the marshland for us to observe. In the picture you'll see Lori holding our proud capture - she'll voutch that it was one heavy turtle!

Don't worry - we're not switching our study species anytime soon! This week we had lots of terrapins in the lab for our volunteers to work with too. Would you believe that we caught 53 terrapins this week?! Woo-hoo!

Have you seen the environmental data loggers???

We're currently in the middle of Team 5 and it's been an EXTREMELY busy week. Dr. Avery is out of town for vacation and thus Dr. Jim Spotila has been our fearless leader (although he's been spending most of his time writing his new book, "Saving Sea Turtles"). We started the week out with a broken boat, a broken trailer, and a broken freezer. Shortly thereafter, we found that most of our environmental sensors that were placed throughout the bay had gone missing (i.e., they were stolen). Although initially upsetting, Jules, Abby, Andy, and Brianna were quick to volunteer to help me build a new floating board to hold more sensors. In the photo above, you can see Andy, Abby, and Brianna busily working on the new board (with my brand new drill that Jim bought me!). A temperature/light sensor will be placed on one side of the board and then two ibuttons will be suspended from the board into the water column to collect water temperature data. The sensors are programmed to collect one data point every 15 minutes so we should be back in action soon.

Bye Team 4!!!

Team 4 (aka Teen Team 2, check out the pic on the right!) left us last Monday after a great nine days together. Turtle trapping was a bit low. On the best day, we caught 17 turtles and on the worst day ... 0. Unfortunately, the off week hasn't been any better. I'm pretty sure that we haven't broken the 10 turtle mark since the volunteers left. Plus it's been a rainy week. We didn't even get out on the water for one day due to thunderstorms.

Team 5 arrived yesterday. We now have eight volunteers who range in age from 18 to 54. They have traveled from as close as northern NJ to as far as Australia. We pulled all of the traps out of the water over the weekend and the new volunteers are currently placing traps in Collins Pond and Cable Creek. Here's hoping we catch lots of turtles!

A chop from the prop

Last week during trapping, the team at Terrapin Station noticed a startling pattern. Over three consecutive days, three large female terrapins were captured with major shell damage. All were caught in Gunning River, one of our southern-most sites. Here, we have witnessed jetskis and other personal watercrafts zip through the narrow channels on many occasions. We can't say that the number of speedsters is greater than in other BBay terrapin habitats, but this sampling of turtles may help suggest it to be so...

The first lady captured had the most severe injuries. Picture 1 above shows her severed front limbs, and major scarring on the plastron near these areas. She's lucky to be alive! The correlation of scarring and limb damage in the same areas is obvious prop damage, versus predation.
The second terrapin (not pictured) had a large puncture scar on her carapace. With the exception of a boat propeller, there is nothing strong, sharp, or fast enough to have caused such an injury in Barnegat Bay.
The third terrapin and her injuries can be seen in picture 2 and 3. The area of her carapace above her left forelimb was so completely cut that it was actually wiggling! As you can see in picture 3, she was quickly mended thanks to some fast drying epoxy (recommended for concrete, stone, wood, glass or metal).

It is important to post these pictures, not so that you feel sorry for the terrapins, but more so to promote awareness of the impact boating may cause the natural inhabitants of our waterways. Observations such as these are a harsh reminder of how important research like Lori and Andy's (involving the impacts of anthropogenic sound on terrapins) is to promoting responsible management of the areas shared by humans and turtles, alike.

We're now in the middle of Team 4! We have seven teens and one teen coordinator all here at the Lighthouse Center helping us out. Today, Hal and Lori P. are taking out groups of volunteers on the boats to do some turtle trapping. Andy and Rachel are out on the water doing the last of Andy's boat trials. Yay Andy! I was left behind to do some data analysis, but somehow it seemed like more fun to blog.

I also wanted to show everyone the article that appeared in the Buffalo News recently. Check it out for more info on Andy's study!

Asbury Park Press

Yesterday, we had a visit from a reporter and a photographer from the Asbury Park Press. They stopped by the Lighthouse Center early in the morning and Andy and I discussed our sound/boat research with them. After that, the reporters joined Hal and John for a short boat trip to the bay. They visited a fyke (surprise, surprise ... there was a turtle in it!) and then went over to John's study site. An article was in the newspaper today about the Earthwatch project (Click here to see the article!) and there will be another article in the near future on John's "Project Terrapin". Good article, fun experience, and always great to get info about the turtles out there ... but there are a few scientific inaccuracies in the text. Can you find any???

Photo album

Terrapins can hear!

Today was my third day at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, MA. I've completed hearing tests on three of the five terrapins that I brought with me and I'm proud to report that terrapins can hear (although not very well!). In the photo, you can see a female terrapin that has an electrode in her ear and an electrode in her midline (i.e., brain). The brass object is an earphone that is fitted to the turtle's ear. The basic idea is that a sound is played through the earphone to the turtle and then the electrodes collect information regarding the auditory nerve's reaction to the sound. I know that everyone has been losing sleep over not knowing whether terrapins can hear. So go ahead and rest easy tonight. (:

I also had the opportunity to perform CT head scans at Woods Hole Oceanography Institue (WHOI) on two of my terrapins (a male and a female). These scans allowed us to take a closer look at the structure of the terrapin ear. Pretty cool stuff!

Other than that, I will admit that I'm missing Barnegat Bay. Hopefully, I'll be able to head back to the field station within the next few days. In the meantime, I have a weird feeling that things are going very well in NJ and that they've caught 48395 turtles since I left!

Here jet ski, jet ski, jet ski!!!

It's the beginning of another crazy expedition here in Terrapin Station, NJ. This time around we have seven teenage volunteers and one teen coordinator. So far, we've only captured six turtles total but I'm pretty convinced that things will improve in the near future. Claire has been taking some volunteers to Spizzle each day to trap turtles. No Spizzle turtles yet, but hopefully we'll have some soon.

Jules is still searching for her turtle. We checked the Lighthouse Center traps today and found one decent size female; however, still no sign of the bionic turtle.

Other than that, I gave a presentation to a group of 4th to 8th graders from the organization "Operation Military Family" on Saturday night. I was surprisingly nervous since I've never worked with that age group before. It went really well though. I think they all enjoyed seeing the turtles and learning all about what they can do to help conserve the bay.

On Sunday, Chris and I made some underwater recordings of a jet ski. We basically set up all my sound equipment and then waited for an hour until we were able to flag down a jet skier. He was very willing to help and we now have some pretty awesome recordings of a jet ski.

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to do some hearing tests on terrapins. So excited!

Have you seen this terrapin???

She should be easy to pick out of a crowd with the various transmitters on her back! On the top of her carapace you'll see a radio transmitter, which sends signals for reception in the air (when the she's catching a breath at the surface or basking on land). At the back, by her tail is a sonic transmitter, whose signal can be heard through the brackish water with our Dukane underwater receiver.

These transmitters were placed on terrapin BCOPX, my first 'bionic' turtle, on June 17th after she was found crossing the trail at our field station. As a gravid (egg-bearing) female, this was the perfect opportunity for me to begin my preliminary research regarding the movement and nesting behaviors of terrapins in Barnegat Bay. What better place to monitor this turtle than in our own field station canal?

After being released, I have been monitoring BCOPX's movement using Submersible Underwater Receivers (SUR, Sonotronics Inc.) which remotely log data regarding her time and place thanks to the sonic transmitter on her back. This information will be useful in my study as I determine if these SUR units are valid indicators of the nesting behavior of gravid females.

However, the last step of the process has proven to be a difficult one. Recently, I've attempted various methods towards re-capture of BCOPX. Currently I have a 6-element radio receiver set up, which will receive her radio signal up to a mile away. Also, I've set hoop-net traps in the canal near where she was released, hoping she swims in. Yesterday we caught a female terrapin about her size in the nets, so I'm optimistic that BCOPX may be caught soon also!

I'll keep you posted, but in the meantime keep your eyes peeled!

Apparently, 78 diamondback terrapins caused quite a stir at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday. Check out the article through the link below!

JFK Terrapins

We just finished Team 2 yesterday and they were a wonderful team! Although small both in number and size (there were only three of them and none of them could beat my modest height of 5'4"), they managed to set fyke nets and process turtles like pros. They will be missed! During the "off" week, we're planning on trapping more turtles, making some boat recordings, and finding Jules' elusive Lighthouse Center terrapin. Wish us luck!

Bottom (from left): Jules, Me, Jen
Middle: Lori P., Abby, Hannah, Chris, Rachel, Sharon
Top: Andy, John

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!