{"id":11407,"date":"2012-07-07T14:22:48","date_gmt":"2012-07-07T19:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=11407"},"modified":"2012-07-07T14:22:48","modified_gmt":"2012-07-07T19:22:48","slug":"tracking-elusive-terrapin-yields-important-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=11407","title":{"rendered":"Tracking Elusive Terrapin Yields Important Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legendary “Bigfoot” of Buzzards Bay<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Bigfoot” of Massachusetts SouthCoast — Diamondback Terrapin<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

“An aura of mystery rivaling that of Bigfoot attends the diamondbacks of Buzzards Bay<\/em>,” writes Daniel Sheldon Lee in his 2004 book, Buzzards Bay: A Journey of Discovery<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Lee continues, “They are not plentiful; in many of their habitats, nobody even knows they’re there<\/em>.”\u00c2\u00a0 Later Lee wrote, “Don Lewis, a local expert on the reptiles, claims that whenever he has found suitable habitat in Buzzards Bay, he has found terrapins.\u00c2\u00a0 You simply need to be an expert to find them<\/em>.”\u00c2\u00a0 More accurately, Turtle Journal’s Don Lewis would say, you\u00c2\u00a0need a wide network of curious citizen scientists to alert you\u00c2\u00a0to signs\u00c2\u00a0of these Buzzards Bay “Bigfoots.”<\/p>\n

Finding such elusive critters requries knowledge, expertise, practice and luck. The sort of “luck” that Pasteur described in his famous quote, “Fortune favors the prepared mind<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

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Female Terrapin Leaves Tracks during Nesting Run<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

On shore to nest, female terrapins leave distinctive tracks in the soft sand.\u00c2\u00a0 The plastron, her bottom shell,\u00c2\u00a0smooths the ground and often her\u00c2\u00a0tail carves a line down the center of this smoothness.\u00c2\u00a0 Her powerful\u00c2\u00a0limbs leave “commas” in the sand bracketing the\u00c2\u00a0flat center.\u00c2\u00a0 Seeing\u00c2\u00a0a turtle with\u00c2\u00a0tracks behind her helps to\u00c2\u00a0reinforce these lessons.<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0Tracking the Elusive Diamondback Terrapin<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In the field, it proves a little more challenging when you scour a well trodden beach for tracks that may, or may not, belong to\u00c2\u00a0the Buzzards Bay Bigfoot.\u00c2\u00a0 On Thursday morning’s high tide, Turtle Journal identified terrapin tracks at a newly discovered nesting site in Sippican Harbor.\u00c2\u00a0 The video above takes you along for the adventure.\u00c2\u00a0 Will the trail end with only ephemeral\u00c2\u00a0footprints in the sand?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Or will\u00c2\u00a0we\u00c2\u00a0successfully track down\u00c2\u00a0a legendary diamondback terrapin?<\/p>\n

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Very Special Terrapin Reveals Sippican Secret<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In this case, we not only discovered a rare diamondback terrapin, but\u00c2\u00a0this turtle\u00c2\u00a0gave us a research breakthrough.\u00c2\u00a0 We have been capturing and marking terrapins in the Sippican Harbor mating aggregation\u00c2\u00a0for a decade.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet, we had never\u00c2\u00a0found one of these turtles at a nesting site; not a single turtle.\u00c2\u00a0 This one proved the first terrapin netted in the Head of Sippican Harbor\u00c2\u00a0to have been idenfitied at a nesting location.<\/p>\n

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Becky Nourse Nets Terrapin #265 in Sipican Harbor<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This female, Terrapin #265, \u00c2\u00a0was first captured at the\u00c2\u00a0Head of\u00c2\u00a0Harbor\u00c2\u00a0mating aggregation on May 30th, 2005 when she was a young lady of nine years of age.\u00c2\u00a0 Back then she measured 18.7 centimeters shell length and weighed 1133 grams.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, she has grown to 19.85 centimeters long and weighs 1344 grams.\u00c2\u00a0 She also has the distinction of being the only diamondback terrapin that we have observed in Buzzards Bay (or Cape Cod Bay) with no spots, marks or patterns\u00c2\u00a0on her blue-gray skin.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

With leadership from an engaged community of citizen scientists abutting this newly discovered \u00c2\u00a0nesting site, Turtle Journal hopes we can make great strides to restore the dwindling terrapin population in Sippican Harbor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legendary “Bigfoot” of Buzzards Bay “Bigfoot” of Massachusetts SouthCoast — Diamondback Terrapin “An aura of mystery rivaling that of Bigfoot attends the diamondbacks of Buzzards Bay,” writes Daniel Sheldon Lee in his 2004 book, Buzzards Bay: A Journey of Discovery.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Lee continues, “They are not plentiful; in many of their habitats, nobody even knows they’re there.”\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11407"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11462,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407\/revisions\/11462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}