{"id":2901,"date":"2009-07-24T20:11:04","date_gmt":"2009-07-25T01:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=2901"},"modified":"2010-01-16T12:01:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-16T17:01:26","slug":"turtle-bests-odds-to-win-epic-struggle-to-save-offspring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=2901","title":{"rendered":"Turtle Bests Odds to Win Epic Struggle to Save Offspring"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2728-001-840\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Injured Diamondback Terrapin Collapsed over Completed Nest<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to see published story in CapeCodToday.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Crushed\u00c2\u00a0shell, blood caked wounds, dehydrated\u00c2\u00a0body,\u00c2\u00a0and exhausted,\u00c2\u00a0a young female turtle collapsed over her\u00c2\u00a0finished nest that now held 14 beautiful pinkish eggs and the future of diamondback terrapins in Wellfleet.\u00c2\u00a0 Without a large, powerful brain to convince her the situation was hopeless and to rationalize failure, this terrapin fought through pain and impossible odds to protect her offspring.\u00c2\u00a0 “Neither angst nor doubt,” the turtle motto, proved key to achieving\u00c2\u00a0success\u00c2\u00a0when any smart thinking mammal would simply have given up.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess that’s\u00c2\u00a0the reason turtles survived the dinosaurs and have racked up 250,000,000 years of design success.\u00c2\u00a0 Wouldn’t it be wonderful\u00c2\u00a0if humans\u00c2\u00a0could adopt a few of their environmental survival skills.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n
As I walked toward Turtle Point Saturday morning, a young boy called out excitedly from the Agger cottage.\u00c2\u00a0 Tyson had been vacationing with his New York City parents for the last three weeks and had become familiar with Lieutenant Island as the nesting epicenter for diamondback terrapins in New England.\u00c2\u00a0 He watched as they crawled ashore from Cape Cod Bay to find nesting spots all over the island from deserted dunes to rustic one-lane dirt roads and driveways.\u00c2\u00a0 Eight-year-old Tyson gained a graduate level education in conservation biology in a few weeks of summer of adventure.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Hey, Turtleman!\u00c2\u00a0 She’s hurt.\u00c2\u00a0 Real bad.\u00c2\u00a0 Bleeding.\u00c2\u00a0 She needs help.\u00c2\u00a0 I saw her on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 Run over.”\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00c2\u00a0spurted out words through\u00c2\u00a0clenched emotions.<\/span><\/div>\n

\"2728-002-cropped-840\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bridge Crushed from Weight of Vehicle<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Tyson’s dad explained they had found a terrapin on Marsh Road Extension near some partial nest digs on Friday night.\u00c2\u00a0 The turtle had been run over, its shell cracked and bleeding.\u00c2\u00a0 Tyson wanted to help the turtle; he begged his dad to\u00c2\u00a0put band aids on the wounds.\u00c2\u00a0 Dad took Tyson home to\u00c2\u00a0settle him down,\u00c2\u00a0and when he returned to check out the turtle it had disappeared.\u00c2\u00a0 “It probably crawled somewhere to die,” he said.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n
I promised Tyson I’d\u00c2\u00a0search for the injured animal.<\/span><\/div>\n

\"2728-005-840\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Grass and Weeds Embedded in Cracked Shell<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Thirty minutes later I found her draped over a newly completed nest.\u00c2\u00a0 Her carapace had large lateral cracks on both sides as a heavy vehicle had completely run\u00c2\u00a0over her.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite the strong architectural design of the turtle shell, the force had crushed and broken the supporting bridge that holds together the top and bottom shells on both sides of her body.\u00c2\u00a0 The breaks in her shell sported weeds and grass stems from where she had dragged herself to hide from predators over night.\u00c2\u00a0 Her bleeding had congealed, but she felt light as air from exhausted dehydration.\u00c2\u00a0 Thankfully, her strong shell repelled enough of the vehicular weight to\u00c2\u00a0prevent fatal organ\u00c2\u00a0damage; it had protected the integrity of her spinal column as all limbs continued to function normally.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"2728-004-840\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Terrapin #2728 After Successfully Completing Her Epic Struggle<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I tracked her by following scrapes in the compacted road and driveway.\u00c2\u00a0 She had abandoned several tries because the ground was simply too hard to penetrate.\u00c2\u00a0 Her last and successful attempt cut through a layer of gravel and heavily compacted parking pad soil until she reached softer sand where she could hollow out an egg chamber for her babies-to-be.\u00c2\u00a0 Rear limbs that bear the brunt of digging were worn raw scratching through chipped gravel.\u00c2\u00a0 She had covered the nest with every bit of sand she could find and tapped down the soil to protect her clutch.\u00c2\u00a0 Now she lay motionless.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"2728-011-14-eggs-95-grams-840\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fourteen Future Hatchlings Weighing 95 Grams (3.4 Ounces)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This turtle\u00c2\u00a0had been\u00c2\u00a0marked #2728 when we first saw her in July 2006.\u00c2\u00a0 We had last observed her on June 25th when a group of kids found her\u00c2\u00a0basking on the flooded Lieutenant Island causeway as she prepared to embark on her first nesting run\u00c2\u00a0of the year 23 days ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"2728-015-nest-143-dune-840\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nest Protected with Predator Excluder<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We immediately cleaned her wounds to prevent infection and rehydrated her.\u00c2\u00a0 Since her nest lay in such a vulnerable location, a parking pad, we relocated\u00c2\u00a0her eggs to a safe, sandy dune where we covered them with a predator excluder.\u00c2\u00a0 We wanted to\u00c2\u00a0do our part to compensate for what humans had already done to her and to\u00c2\u00a0protect these babies she had fought so hard to save.\u00c2\u00a0 Thanks to this little bit of extra “scale tipping,” the odds\u00c2\u00a0that her eggs would become turtles\u00c2\u00a0increased from a\u00c2\u00a0meager one in a thousand to better than one in ten.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n
The lost of mature, breeding females to a threatened species, such as diamondback terrapins, is a terrible blow to their recovery.\u00c2\u00a0 Because of the cold, late spring, turtle nesting was delayed on Cape Cod by a week to ten days, pushing peak nesting into the 4th of July weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 The result was more than a dozen squished turtles that were run over by heavy summer traffic on the Outer Cape.\u00c2\u00a0 The impact on a late maturing, long-lived and diminishing population like turtles can be devastating.\u00c2\u00a0 It takes a mature female terrapin twenty to forty years of full reproduction to\u00c2\u00a0replace just herself.\u00c2\u00a0 Losing a dozen mature females in a single season will have a negative impact on the Wellfleet Bay population for decades.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/object><\/div>\n

Turtle Wins Epic Struggle to Save Offspring<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

With a bit of turtle TLC, Terrapin #2728 snapped to life and by mid afternoon she headed back into the healing salt\u00c2\u00a0marsh channels\u00c2\u00a0of Wellfleet Bay.\u00c2\u00a0 We have\u00c2\u00a0recorded injuries similar to hers throughout our three decade longitudinal study of terrapins on the Outer Cape.\u00c2\u00a0 Having survived the initial\u00c2\u00a0trauma without loss of limb function, she has a good chance of recovery.\u00c2\u00a0 If humans can be even a tad more vigilant in such an environmentally sensitive area as Lieutenant Island, she may survive long enough to bring terrapins back from the brink of extinction.\u00c2\u00a0 Her potential babies incubating under the warm sands of Turtle Point will have their say\u00c2\u00a0about the future of the species, too\u00c2\u00a0… if humans give them a chance.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Injured Diamondback Terrapin Collapsed over Completed Nest Click here to see published story in CapeCodToday.com. Crushed\u00c2\u00a0shell, blood caked wounds, dehydrated\u00c2\u00a0body,\u00c2\u00a0and exhausted,\u00c2\u00a0a young female turtle collapsed over her\u00c2\u00a0finished nest that now held 14 beautiful pinkish eggs and the future of diamondback terrapins in Wellfleet.\u00c2\u00a0 Without a large, powerful brain to convince her the situation was hopeless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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\/2901"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2916,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions\/2916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}