{"id":9635,"date":"2011-09-06T21:33:33","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T02:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=9635"},"modified":"2011-09-06T21:33:33","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T02:33:33","slug":"eye-on-the-prize-terrapin-survival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=9635","title":{"rendered":"Eye on the Prize — Terrapin Survival"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Diamondback Terrapin Hatchling @ Turtle Point<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The prize of diamondback terrapin conservation is a healthy, growing population of this non-migratory species that had been declining towards extinction for the last century.\u00c2\u00a0 Achieving that prize means increasing recruits into the adult cadre to stabilize their numbers and then to transform decline into increase.\u00c2\u00a0 That whole process begins with hatchlings.\u00c2\u00a0 Saving large numbers of babies bolsters the natural population with lots of new recruits.\u00c2\u00a0 Turtle Journal and its partners\u00c2\u00a0protect nests laid from early June through late July with predator excluder cages to get\u00c2\u00a0eggs safely through two to three months of incubation.\u00c2\u00a0 As hatchlings emerge from these nests, volunteers assist them\u00c2\u00a0in making\u00c2\u00a0the most dangerous passage of their lives … from nests in sandy\u00c2\u00a0beaches, dunes and banks\u00c2\u00a0to protective camouflage either in thick lowland salt marsh or in thick upland vegetation.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Highly vulnerable hatchlings\u00c2\u00a0simply need a good hiding\u00c2\u00a0place for their first winter snooze before they begin foraging in the nursery salt marsh next spring.<\/p>\n

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Jayla Releases Hatchlings @ Turtle Point<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On Saturday, Jayla met up with the Turtle Journal team on Lieutenant Island to learn about threatened turtles.\u00c2\u00a0 She had an opportunity to release\u00c2\u00a030 tiny hatchlings that had emerged from nests over the previous 24 hours.\u00c2\u00a0 As Jayla gently lifted the babies from their pails\u00c2\u00a0at Turtle Point, she watched carefully as they scrambled in random directions to find a safe place to hide.<\/p>\n

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Maire Tries to Photograph the Chaos<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Maire, who accompanied Jayla to discover the mystery of Cape Cod’s elusive terrapins, tried as best she could to document the mad scramble of tiny hatchlings crisscrossing Turtle Point in search of a safe spot to hide\u00c2\u00a0from hosts of voracious predators.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Jayla and Maire Meet Terrapin Hatchling<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Before leaving Turtle Point, Jayla and Maire studied one of the hatchlings up close and personal.\u00c2\u00a0 And like all who bring a hatchling into their hands, they bonded with the little critter, a perfect miniature version of its parents.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike mammalian infants, these tiny hatchlings lead independent lives from the moment of their emergence from the nest; their parents’ DNA alone provides everything they need.\u00c2\u00a0 But also unlike mammals, the chance of a baby’s survival lies somewhere between one in two hundred fifty to one in a thousand.<\/p>\n

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Don Lewis Eyes Terrapin Hatchling<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, under the watchful eye of the Turtle Journal team and its partners on the Outer Cape, odds of survival to adulthood are increased to as high as one in eight, giving this threatened species a substantially improved chance of avoiding extinction.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0With aggressive nest conservation begun in 2000, the steady decline in terrapin numbers in Wellfleet Bay slowed, and\u00c2\u00a0then stabilized in mid-decade.\u00c2\u00a0 Within the last few years, the trend fully reversed and\u00c2\u00a0the Wellfleet population is now growing once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diamondback Terrapin Hatchling @ Turtle Point The prize of diamondback terrapin conservation is a healthy, growing population of this non-migratory species that had been declining towards extinction for the last century.\u00c2\u00a0 Achieving that prize means increasing recruits into the adult cadre to stabilize their numbers and then to transform decline into increase.\u00c2\u00a0 That whole process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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\/9635"}],"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=9635"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9661,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9635\/revisions\/9661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}